Haagensen transformed from surgeon to shaman: “To some extent,” he wrote about his patients, “no doubt, they transfer the burden [of their disease] to me.” Another surgeon wrote—chillingly—that he sometimes “operated on cancer of the breast solely for its effect on morale.” He also privately noted, “I do not despair of carcinoma being cured somewhere in the future, but this blessed achievement will, I believe, never be wrought by the knife of the surgeon.”
