Political revolutions, the writer Amitav Ghosh writes494, often occur in the courtyards of palaces, in spaces on the cusp of power, located neither outside nor inside. Scientific revolutions, in contrast, typically occur in basements, in buried-away places removed from mainstream corridors of thought. But a surgical revolution must emanate from within surgery’s inner sanctum—for surgery is a profession intrinsically sealed to outsiders. To even enter the operating theater, one must be soused in soap and water, and surgical tradition. To change surgery, one must be a surgeon.
