Today, surgery saves hundreds of thousands of lives a year. But getting to this position has not been a simple story of selfless men working tirelessly in the pursuit of medical advancement. It is also a bloodstained tale of blunders, arrogance, mishaps and mistakes. The road to surgical advance has been paved by heroes. However, it has also been littered with lobotomised patients, grave-robbing and neo-Nazis.
Blood And Guts: A History Of Surgery explores how brilliant surgical breakthroughs, sometimes humorous, often tragic, shaped the evolution of modern medicine. Presented by Michael Mosley (pictured), the series brings the past to life through demonstrations, interviews and challenging experiments. Each week, Mosley tackles a different branch of surgery to reveal how it developed.
In the first episode, Mosley investigates the story of brain surgery - the most complex organ. A century ago, cutting into the brain was a terrifying prospect for both patient and surgeon. Harvey Cushing, the so-called "father of neurosurgery", revolutionised brain surgery. Before him, it was little more than bloody butchery which killed around 70 per cent of patients. Michael travels to Yale University to see Cushing's archive: a collection of more than 1,000 perfectly preserved human brains.
The infamous Walter Freeman was responsible for the lobotomisation of thousands of individuals. His brutal operations - often using ice picks driven into the brain through the eye socket - left many patients with life-long psychiatric problems. Michael meets one of Freeman's victims, 59-year-old Howard Dully, who was lobotomised at the age of 12.
Michael also takes part in a "mind control" experiment at University College London to help surgeons map the brain. Using "transcranial magnetic stimulation" or TMS, the experiment asks how it will affect Michael's ability to perform even the most simple of tasks.
Finally, the film shows an extraordinary operation on 28-year-old florist Kathryn, who has a malformed blood vessel in her brain. Incredibly, Kathryn must remain fully conscious as her brain is operated on - to ensure no damage is caused. This remarkable operation would have been impossible without some of the pioneering surgeons of the past.
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