Are you ready to try your skills at surgery? Visit Open Heart. This site has a virtual hospital where you will learn about disease, the human heart, surgery, and healthy living. Click on the "Surgery" link to "perform" open heart and bypass surgery.

Surgeons perform surgery, which is the practice of treating diseases and/or injuries in operations normally with instruments. Surgery was invented a long time ago and means "working by hand" in Greek. If a Stone Age person had a headache a hole might be cut in their head to "release the evil spirits." Other primitive people used splints or seared the flesh to fix broken body parts and stop bleeding. 

The Hindus had 125 different surgical tools! They also could do some plastic surgery to replace noses and ears! Surgeons and barbers in the Middle Ages conducted operations; only barbers did blood letting. This is how the barber pole originated. Red for blood and white for bandages!

Ambroise Pare was a Frenchmen who lived in the 1500s. He stopped the practice of pouring boiling oil on wounds to sterilize them.

By 2001, surgeons could do remote controlled surgical operations. This is used when a doctor cannot get to where the operation is taking place.  Through technology, they perform the surgery from thousands of miles away! In 1967, An African surgeon completed the first heart transplant. 

Modern surgery has advanced in 5 big ways. 
1) Aseptic surgery is developing more
2) The increased knowledge of the body and its processes
3) Technical improvements in instruments
4) The development of anesthesia
5) The use of chemicals to treat and prevent infections

Credits

Web Sites

Munson, Edwin S.. "Surgery." World Book Online Reference Center. 2004. World Book, Inc. 16 Feb. 2004. . <http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar540820.>

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