Publications by authors named "I M Rutkow"
Objective: To explore use of the notion of American exceptionalism by fellows of the American Surgical Association (ASA) (1880 through World War I) and how this proved instrumental in the rise of surgery in the United States.
Background: American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is innately different from other nations because of its economic, geographic, political, religious, and social foundations. Although, currently, the concept of American exceptionalism implies superiority, in its original 19th century connotation, the idea referred to the distinctive character of America as a free nation.
Objective: To explore the founding of the American Medical Association's Section on Surgery in 1859 and how it represented, on a national basis, the beginnings of organized surgery and the formal start of the professionalization and specialization of surgery in the United States.
Background: The broad social process of organization, professionalization, and specialization that began for various disciplines in America in the mid-19th century was a reaction to emerging economic, political, and scientific influences including industrialization, urbanization, and technology. For surgeons or, at least, those men who performed surgical operations, the efforts toward group organization provided a means to promote their skills and restrict competition.
Objective: To explore the life of Edward J. Bermingham (1853-1922) and his founding, in 1876, of the Archives of Clinical Surgery, the nation's first surgical journal.
Background: Beginning in the 1870s, American medicine found itself in the middle of a revolution marked by fundamental economic, scientific, and social transformations.
Objective: To explore the details of Henry Hollingsworth Smith's (1815-1890) achievement as the first physician to organize in a systematic and chronologic manner the details of the history of surgery in America and prepare a register of men who performed surgical operations.
Background: The life of Smith, the earliest of the nation's surgeons to elucidate the history of American surgery, is little known. His boosting the image of the scalpel wielder helped shape the future of the craft, in particular, surgery's rise as a specialty and profession.
Objective: To explore the details of Samuel D. Gross's achievements as America's foremost historian of medicine in the mid-nineteenth century.
Background: The life of Samuel D.