The_Invention_of_Surgery

reforming Austria’s legal, educational, and medical systems. As one of the
great Enlightenment monarchs of the 18th century, Joseph’s contributions
would be long-lasting, particularly his massive hospital complex, the
Allgemeines Krankenhaus der Stadt Wien, or Vienna General Hospital.
The numerous palaces, opera houses, majestic government buildings,
statues, and fountains are a testament to the glory of the City of Music on
the Danube, but it is the Vienna General Hospital (locally referred to as the
“AKH”) that is important to students of the history of science.
Emperor Joseph II built a sprawling hospital, fifty feet high, with
multiple courtyards and many divisions, separating the hospital by
specialty. Today, the buildings are intact but have been transformed into
non-medical educational facilities for the University of Vienna. Opened in
1784, the AKH followed the European pattern of the 18th century, where
numerous hospitals were built, arising from a consciousness of society’s
responsibility to the poor. With increased modernization throughout
Europe, peasants were flocking to cities, and with the burgeoning
Industrial Revolution, the cramped conditions and dangerous working
environments made medical care more needed than ever before. The old
medical institutions throughout Europe, such as the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris
and St. Bartholomew’s in London, had cared for the poor in the great cities
for centuries, but the population explosion created a demand for more
hospitals.
The Vienna General Hospital emerged the same decade as the Industrial
Revolution. Medical research continued to be severely limited just as the
world was becoming modern, and as cities became more congested and
even more susceptible to contagion, our helplessness became more
obvious. Modernity surprisingly worsened disease and emphasized our
ignorance. The history of surgery almost always entails heroic failures,
accidental breakthroughs, and unimaginable solutions. This was especially
true on the maternity ward of the Vienna General Hospital in the mid-
1800s.
A startling transformation began in the 19th century: hospitals stopped
being death houses, and became healing institutions, and even a venue to
cultivate life. The French Revolution had transformed physicians’ ideas
about the body, and had ushered in an era of uninhibited physical exam of
the female body. With an improved scientific understanding of anatomy
and pathology, the mechanics of childbirth became interesting to