“He took so long the wounds would heal before the operation was over…”
William Mayo
Sometimes simple ideas have the most lasting impact. William Halsted is often described as the father of modern surgery. He had lots of innovations and ideas – surgical gloves, haemostasis, counting packs and instuments, surgical training programs, reporting surgical outcomes and dear to me, modern breast cancer surgery. Halsted was never a saint, he fought a cocaine addiction most of this career, curing it only by swtiching to a narcotic habit. The TV series The Knick is loosely inspired by his life. One of Halsted’s ideas is still used universally to care for all hospital patients. As an intern at New York Hospital he developed the use of a simple bedside chart to plot patient observations on a regular basis. It does however make me reflect on the percentage of my career spent trying to locate the damn things! #breastsurgeonsrule #letsmakelemonade
Pen Paint and Scalpel 