American Exceptionalism and the American Surgical Association: The Rise of Surgery in the United States.

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.

The American Medical Association's Section on Surgery: The Beginnings of the Organization, Professionalization, and Specialization of Surgery in the United States.

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.

Edward Bermingham and the archives of clinical surgery: America's First Surgical Journal.

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.

Henry Hollingsworth Smith and His Bibliographical Index and Historical Record: The Beginning of American Surgical Historiography.

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.

Samuel D. Gross, the Writing of American Surgical History.

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.

The education, training, and specialization of surgeons: turn-of-the-century America and its postgraduate medical schools.

Objectives: To understand the institutions, personnel, and events that shaped postgraduate medical schools in late 19th- and early 20th-century America.

Background: In a little remembered chapter of American surgical medical history, postgraduate medical schools played a decisive role in surgery's march toward professionalization and specialization. While William Halsted was first establishing his training program in Baltimore, medical facilities such as the New York Polyclinic and the New York Post-Graduate were already turning out thousands of physicians who considered themselves "specialists" in surgery.

Joseph Lister and his 1876 tour of America.

Objective: To explore the events and people that shaped Joseph Lister's 1876 tour of America and how the journey became a landmark episode in the history of surgery.

Background: In a little known chapter in American medical history, Joseph Lister toured the United States in 1876 in an attempt to convince physicians that they should accept his ideas about surgical antisepsis. His 2 month-long visit, which included a transcontinental railroad trip across the North American continent, sparked controversy as doctors struggled to understand the relationship between bacteria and disease.

Harvey Cushing and the battle of Boston common: military medical preparedness for world war one.

Objective: To explore the events and people that shaped Harvey Cushing, one of the nation's leading surgeons, into a political actor as he rallied support for the issue of military medical preparedness for World War One.

Summary Background Data: In a little remembered episode of American medical history, for 2 years before the nation's formal entry into World War One in April 1917, Harvey Cushing attempted to garner political and professional support for the idea of military medical preparedness. His efforts, including the proposed construction of a functioning Base Hospital on Boston Common, sparked controversy in a public that was torn between maintaining neutrality and going to war.

Homeopaths, surgery, and the Civil War: Edward C. Franklin and the struggle to achieve medical pluralism in the Union army.

An important aspect of the Union army medical corps throughout the Civil War was the clinical discord that pitted allopathic, or orthodox, physicians against sectarian, or unorthodox, physicians. Allopaths dominated the corps and its examining boards and consequently denied commissions as army surgeons to sectarian practitioners such as the homeopaths. This probably affected surgical manpower needs, since many well-trained homeopathic surgeons, like Edward C.

George Crile, Harvey Cushing, and the Ambulance Americaine: military medical preparedness in World War I.

In a little-remembered episode of American surgical history, more than 2 years before the nation's formal entry into World War I in April 1917, teams of surgeons and their support personnel had already been deployed in France. The surgeons' service at the Ambulance Américaine in Paris and at other smaller hospital facilities in the French countryside brought about the efficient integration of civilian American medicine into World War I's military structure. Under the leadership of George Crile and Harvey Cushing, this early American surgical presence in France created remarkable organizational and scientific advances in military medicine and prepared the United States to go to war.

The PerFix plug repair for groin hernias.

Since the mid-1990s, the PerFix plug hernioplasty has become one of the mainstays of a surgeon's operative armamentarium. The repair is a technically simple surgical operation, which can be used to treat most groin hernias. To demonstrate the simplicity and effectiveness of the plug technique, a 15-year experience with over 4400 patients is reported.

Demographic and socioeconomic aspects of hernia repair in the United States in 2003.

Data from the National Center for Health Statistics reveals that approximately 800,000 groin hernia repairs were completed in the United States in 2003. More than 90% of these operations involve the use of mesh prosthesis and are performed on an outpatient basis. The two most common groin hernia repair techniques are the Lichtenstein and plug hernioplasties.

A selective history of hernia surgery in the late eighteenth century: the treatises of Percivall Pott, Jean Louis Petit, D. August Gottlieb Richter, Don Antonio de Gimbernat, and Pieter Camper.

Of the different eras in the evolution of hernia surgery one of the most intriguing is the late eighteenth century, when surgeon/anatomists first began to publish their studies of the abdominal wall and the inguinal and femoral canals. It became known as the age of dissection, and many of the surgical successes of subsequent periods can be traced back to the anatomical knowledge gained from 1750 to 1800. These fifty years also served as the all-important transition era from text-only hernia treatises to lavishly illustrated monographs.