Georg Kelling (1866-1945): the root of modern day minimal invasive surgery. A forgotten legend?

On 23 September 1901, at the 73rd meeting of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians in Hamburg, following his lecture "On the inspection of the gullet and the stomach with flexible instruments", the surgeon and gastroenterologist Georg Kelling from Dresden performed a laparoscopy on a dog. He called this procedure coelioscopy. Kelling's ingenious idea to connect his oral insufflation device with the Fiedler trocar and the Nitze cystocope, led to the coelioscopy in 1901 and marked the hour of birth of laparoscopy.