History of Surgery
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The History of Surgery
Surgery is the branch of medicine that deals with the treatment of disease, deformities, or injuries by operations. Surgery has been around for thousands of years, dating all the way back to the Neolithic Age. Over the centuries many different types of methods were developed until we have arrived at what we have now. Because of the testing people did in the past, nowadays we can eliminate pain, prevent infection, and diagnose things accurately. The word surgery comes from a Greek word meaning, working by hand. The first surgeon's tool is believed to be piece of flint. Others tools included knives, awls, drills, scissors, saws, forceps, clamps, syringes, mirrors, needles, cast, splints, & bandages. They even had artificial limbs made of wood and metal.
We know, from archaeology, that Neolithic people, who lived about 10,000 to 6000 BC, knew how to do some types of surgery. One of these was trepanning, where a hole was drilled in the skull to relieve pressure on the brain...