Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations

by Arnold van de Laar

Billroth’s patient was at death’s door. Thérèse Heller was forty-three years old. She had been unable to keep any food down for weeks and had been living on sips of soured milk. The tumour could be clearly felt in the emaciated woman’s upper abdomen, and was about the size of an apple. Before the operation, Billroth rinsed her stomach with 14(!) litres of lukewarm water and on 29 January 1881 he performed the historic procedure. He became a hero overnight and surgeons still write and speak about him with awe and reverence. His historic distal gastrectomy was a genuine turning point, but not because his patient survived the removal of the tumour. More significant was that she had survived the joining together of the