The_Invention_of_Surgery

FIVE

Harvey and Hunter

“When I was a little boy ... I wanted to know about the clouds

and the grasses, why the leaves change colour in the autumn. I

watched the ants, bees, birds, tadpoles, and the caddis worms. I

pestered people with questions about what nobody knew or cared

anything about.”^1

—John Hunter

“When I heard this Man, I said to myself, ‘This is all day-light.’

I felt that what I had previously been taught was comparatively

nothing ... and thought I might, like Mr. Hunter, venture to

Think for myself.”^2

—Henry Cline

The Surgical Intensive Care Unit, or SICU, is a labyrinthine block of three
large nursing units, designed for the postoperative care of the sickest or
most unstable patients. For the past four weeks I’ve been on thirty-six-
hour shifts on alternating days, and even though I’m a surgical intern (in
my first year of my surgical residency), I’ve never ventured back to the
operating room. Instead, in my role as an SICU intern, I attend to the post-
trauma and postsurgical patients who require a higher level of care than
can be delivered on a typical “floor” nursing unit. On those units, no one
is intubated and their intravenous (IV) medications are relatively simple
and not life-sustaining on a minute-to-minute basis, like they are in the
Intensive Care Unit.