Even so, obsessed with Halstedian theory and unable to see beyond its realm, surgeons sharply berated such attempts at nonradical surgery. A surgical procedure186 that did not attempt to obliterate cancer from the body was pooh-poohed as a “makeshift operation.” To indulge in such makeshift operations was to succumb to the old flaw of “mistaken kindness” that a generation of surgeons had tried so diligently to banish.
