Explore

Abstract

Various words derived from the Latin explorare entered the English language from the 15th century onwards, but it was not until the 19th century that explore was used in a medical context. Then, whether the explorer visited unknown regions of the globe or travelled to the interior of the living body, exploration summoned up the heroic virtues of individualism, self-reliance, courage, and muscular strength built on Christian faith.The seeds for this surgical heroism had been sown during the Renaissance when a massive expansion of the exploration of the earth and the body took place. Anatomists, likening the corpse to the earth, compared their task to geographical exploration although they did not use the word. “There are yet, alas!”, wrote the 17th-century natural philosopher Walter Charleton, “Terrae incognitae in the lesser world, as well as the greater, the Island of the Brain, the Isthmus of the Spleen, the streights of the Renes [kidneys]”.At the beginning of the 19th century, modern physical diagnosis—using percussion and auscultation—based on post-mortem analysis was created. Later, this development, along with the use of anaesthesia and asepsis, allowed surgeons to enter the body's cavities. As they did so surgeons recast their earlier identity as butchers—crude, coarse, and beefy—into that of a new professional—both He Man and Gentleman. The surgeon borrowed the identity of a new Victorian hero—the explorer, the pioneer; men who, said Robert Baden-Powell, founder of Scouting, were, “well-muscled males…taming nature in…remote places”. As the American surgeon Frederick Dennis observed: “[There is] no science that calls for greater fearlessness, courage, and nerve than that of surgery”. Just as Captain Randolph Marcy entered the “wholly unexplored and unknown” Red River region of the USA in 1849, so one of the first ovariotomists, Lawson Tait could say that “For my own part, so fearless am I now of abdominal surgery…that in every case…an exploration of the cavity should be made”. Physicians took up the refrain. George Miller Beard, who coined the term neurasthenia, regarded the disease as “the Central Africa of medicine—an unexplored territory into which few men enter.” Something of the heroic explorer still clings to the surgeon, but as with the modern geographical traveller somewhere in that identity the metaphor of teamwork comes into play. Various words derived from the Latin explorare entered the English language from the 15th century onwards, but it was not until the 19th century that explore was used in a medical context. Then, whether the explorer visited unknown regions of the globe or travelled to the interior of the living body, exploration summoned up the heroic virtues of individualism, self-reliance, courage, and muscular strength built on Christian faith. The seeds for this surgical heroism had been sown during the Renaissance when a massive expansion of the exploration of the earth and the body took place. Anatomists, likening the corpse to the earth, compared their task to geographical exploration although they did not use the word. “There are yet, alas!”, wrote the 17th-century natural philosopher Walter Charleton, “Terrae incognitae in the lesser world, as well as the greater, the Island of the Brain, the Isthmus of the Spleen, the streights of the Renes [kidneys]”. At the beginning of the 19th century, modern physical diagnosis—using percussion and auscultation—based on post-mortem analysis was created. Later, this development, along with the use of anaesthesia and asepsis, allowed surgeons to enter the body's cavities. As they did so surgeons recast their earlier identity as butchers—crude, coarse, and beefy—into that of a new professional—both He Man and Gentleman. The surgeon borrowed the identity of a new Victorian hero—the explorer, the pioneer; men who, said Robert Baden-Powell, founder of Scouting, were, “well-muscled males…taming nature in…remote places”. As the American surgeon Frederick Dennis observed: “[There is] no science that calls for greater fearlessness, courage, and nerve than that of surgery”. Just as Captain Randolph Marcy entered the “wholly unexplored and unknown” Red River region of the USA in 1849, so one of the first ovariotomists, Lawson Tait could say that “For my own part, so fearless am I now of abdominal surgery…that in every case…an exploration of the cavity should be made”. Physicians took up the refrain. George Miller Beard, who coined the term neurasthenia, regarded the disease as “the Central Africa of medicine—an unexplored territory into which few men enter.” Something of the heroic explorer still clings to the surgeon, but as with the modern geographical traveller somewhere in that identity the metaphor of teamwork comes into play.