RakSutkaBreast cancer: the biology, the detection, and how the treatment changed.
An old operating theatre with tiered wooden seating around a central table, empty
Where the theory was taughtThe radical operation was the surgical expression of a coherent account of spread, demonstrated in rooms like this.

Section 04

Surgery

One operation was standard for roughly eighty years because of a theory about how the disease travels. This section follows that operation, the smaller ones that replaced it, and the long argument about the axilla.

4 entries · A century of one operation, and how it ended.

Entries in this section

  • A set of nineteenth-century surgical instruments laid out in a fitted wooden case
    04.1 The radical mastectomy

    William Halsted formalised the operation in the 1890s and it remained standard for roughly eighty years.

  • An old operating theatre with tiered wooden seating around a central table, empty
    04.2 Halsted's theory of spread

    The operation followed from a theory about how the disease travelled, and when the theory turned out to be wrong the operation went with it.

  • A modern operating theatre lit and prepared with instruments laid out, unoccupied
    04.3 Conserving surgery

    Removing less tissue was resisted for a long time and then shown to give the same result, which took trials rather than argument.

  • An anatomical teaching model on a stand in a plain room, side light
    04.4 The axilla

    How much of the armpit to remove was its own long argument, with real consequences for the arm afterwards.

Every entry on this site is one thing that was established, and who established it. The complete set is in the register.