Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons – The Impact of Science Deep Impact

John Hunter is sometimes called the ‘Father of scientific surgery’. He studied specimens and the outcomes of real operations to try and find new and better ways of treating patients. Many of the specimens in this Museum are related to major advances in surgery, medicine and public health. Read the following examples as you explore the

John Hunter Museum. Which development do you think has

had the most impact?

1 Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons – The Impact of Science

The smallpox vaccine For hundreds of years, people feared one estimated 300 million people were killed by Nearly two centuries later, the World Health disease more than any other: the ‘speckled the virus. Organisation launched an intensive plan of monster’, or smallpox. smallpox vaccination and in 1979 the disease was formally certified as eradicated. Take a look at the samples of skin, feet and a face from smallpox sufferers in the A wide range of different vaccines are used Crystal Gallery. today, to prevent many other diseases which were once commonplace. You’ve probably What is smallpox? been vaccinated yourself. Smallpox is an acute contagious disease with no effective treatment. Nearly a third of those infected die and survivors may be scarred or suffer blindness. Smallpox didn’t discriminate. Tsar Peter II of Russia (left) and King Louis XV of France (right) both died of the disease

Jenner’s milkmaids… In 1796, after hearing that milkmaids who had Next time you’re vaccinated, think of me… suffered from a similar, but less dangerous disease – cowpox – never contracted More information smallpox, English doctor Edward Jenner www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/ The smallpox virus injected eight year old James Phipps with pus www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/overview/disease taken from someone suffering from cowpox. -facts.asp Millions of victims… Like the milkmaids, Phipps never contracted In the eighteenth century, smallpox killed 1 in the more deadly disease. After experimenting www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/jenner_ed ward.shtml 10 children in Sweden and France, and 1 in 7 successfully on several other children, Jenner in Russia. In the twentieth century alone, an announced his discovery, using the word www.jennermuseum.com ‘vaccine’ from the Latin vacca , meaning cow.

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Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons – The Impact of Science Antiseptics

A dirty business…

If you were unfortunate enough to need an He developed a solution containing carbolic use antiseptic procedures today; they are operation in the eighteenth or early acid and used this to sterilise surgical especially important for combating nineteenth century, your surgeon probably instruments and spray into the air during ‘superbugs’ such as MRSA. wore a bloody apron, used dirty knives and operations. When he directly applied this didn’t wash his hands before he started. Even solution to wounds in 1865, the post- if the operation itself was successful, you had operation infection rate dropped dramatically. a fifty-fifty chance of dying from an infection He called it an ‘anti’-septic because it picked up on the operating table. prevented the wounds from going septic.

Look at the display about Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur in the Science of Surgery Gallery.

Until Louis Pasteur’s studies of fermentation and putrefaction, people thought that infection – or sepsis – was caused by exposing the moist tissues of the body to air, and the standard approach to preventing A modern ‘over the counter’ antiseptic infection was simply to cover up a wound. Louis Pasteur (left) and Joseph Lister (right) More information

Combating infection A lasting legacy www.discoveriesinmedicine.com/A- Inspired by Pasteur’s work, English surgeon With the adoption of antiseptics, surgery An/Antisepsis.html Joseph Lister questioned this, proposing that became much safer, and surgeons could www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/pe infection was caused by minute organisms. attempt more complex operations. We still ople/josephlister.aspx 3

Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons – The Impact of Science The tubed pedicle

The tubed pedicle was a revolutionary returned home, their faces so mutilated they Combating infection surgical technique developed in World War I. were unable to eat, drink or speak. It helped save and transform the lives of Gillies attempted to reconstruct the faces of thousands of seriously injured servicemen. The first plastic surgeon? his patients with tissue taken from other parts of the body. But without antibiotics, infections Read the stories of Private George Stone After witnessing injuries first hand at the often developed. Gillies realised that if the and Sergeant Sidney Beldam, and look at Western Front in 1916, New Zealand surgeon grafted skin’s original blood supply was the displays nearby in the Science of Sir Harold Gillies returned to England and maintained, infection was less likely. And so Surgery Gallery. created a specialist facial ward in a military the tubed pedicle was born. Gillies used a hospital. After being inundated with 2,000 flap of skin from the patient’s chest or ‘War! What is it good for?’ casualties after the Battle of the Somme, he forehead and swung it into place on the face set up an entire hospital in Sidcup, Kent, but the flap remained attached to its original which went on to treat another 5,000 soldiers. location, sewn up into a tube to prevent infection. After several weeks, the flap was cut and repairs made. This technique revolutionised the treatment of facial injuries in the early twentieth century. Today, the development of antibiotics and new microsurgery techniques (which enable plastic surgeons to connect tiny blood British Soldiers vessels together) have superseded it. In 1914, the First World War brought new More information horrors to the world as armed forces used heavy artillery, shells and machine guns on www.projectfacade.com the battlefields of Europe. Many survivors suffered horrific injuries to their faces. The worst were unrecognisable when they Harold Gillies 4

Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons – The Impact of Science Immunosuppressive drugs

Although there are many diseases which can related drug in an experimental human be effectively treated, sometimes, when an kidney transplant in 1961. His first two organ becomes damaged, it will ultimately patients died after a month. The third lived a stop working and need to be replaced if the year. By 1965 80% of patients who received patient is to survive. a kidney from a live donor survived more than a year. Early experiments with transplant surgery were unsuccessful because the recipient’s Today, surgeons can successfully transplant immune system rejected the tissue from livers, hearts, lungs, bowels, stomachs, another person. What was needed was a pancreases and even hands and faces. mechanism to reduce the activity of the In 2008, the total number of organ transplants body’s immune system to make transplants Ronald (L) Richard (R) Herrick completed in the UK was just under 10,300. feasible. Inspired by this success, scientists Look at the transplant display in the More information experimented with a wide range of different Science of Surgery Gallery. treatments to try and prevent rejection, www.archive.sciencewatch.com/interviews/sir I love you brother… including exposure to radiation, infusion of _roy_calne.htm bone marrow cells and the use of drugs. www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/transplant/html/ The world’s first successful major organ murray.html transplant took place in Boston in 1954, when From rabbits to humans Richard Herrick received a kidney from his In 1959 Schwartz and Dameshak showed identical twin, Ronald. It saved his life – that the drug mercaptopurine prevented though he died seven years later when his rabbits from producing anti-bodies against new kidney also became diseased. This human tissue. Further experiments in dogs transplant worked because the twins’ tissues encouraged surgeon Sir Roy Calne to use a were similar enough to prevent rejection. 5

Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons – The Impact of Science The Microscope

Ask a dozen people to draw an image of a homemade microscopes, was the first person individual atoms. Science relies on scientist at work and half of them will to observe protozoa and bacteria (though he observation and a lot of observation relies on probably include a microscope in their sketch. called them animalcules) in pond water, rain microscopes. It’s such a powerful device for seeing water and human saliva. information usually hidden from our eyes, that scientists still rely on it, four hundred years since the first device was developed.

Look at the display of early microscopes and examine the slides in the Science of Surgery Gallery. Taking a closer look

No-one’s quite sure who built the very first microscope, but by the early 1600s scientists around the globe were using them to peer into previously hidden worlds, and a spate of discoveries ensued. In 1661, Marcello

Malpighi’s microscopic observations in

Bologna confirmed William Harvey’s theory of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek An electron microscope blood circulation. In 1665, Robert Hooke Ever since, scientists have used microscopes described the thousands of tiny boxes he saw to help them observe smaller and smaller More information in a slice of cork, naming them cells. things, and by the twentieth century, electron microscopes enabled scientists to view www.discoveriesinmedicine.com/Hu- In 1687 Dutch draper and amateur scientist strands of DNA or look at the structure of Mor/Microscope-Compound.html Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, using his own 6