American surgical instruments: an illustrated history of their manufacture and a directory of instrument makers to 1900

appears in the index. Yet the transformation of American medicine in the Progressive era was, in part, the outcome of philanthropic funding. What, too, if the perceptions of late nineteenthcentury American surgeons were in some sense correct? What built America, they said, was rugged masculine individualism and it was this same force, they claimed, that built American surgery. There is much to be said for this theory suitably shaped. Frontiersmen and late nineteenth-century American surgeons had much in common. Both were engaged in exploration, entering the unknown, colonizing, bringing back specimens. High profile, high technology, adventurous surgery is in many ways an embodiment of the American dream. American surgery is a creation of the American people, not surgeons in America. One of the most famous photographs of surgery this century is Edward Steichen's 'Death takes a holiday' (not reproduced or mentioned here) from a play of the same name. Surgery is the stuff of awesome drama in America. The origins of the M.A.S.H. units are carefully described here but the film and the television series of the same name get no mention. Yet, in a sense, these latter address the serious issues of the making of American surgery head on. What is the relation of war and surgery in a country able to engage in the two at a virtually unrivalled level? (For that matter "silicone implant" does not occur in the index either.)