This chapter explores the beginning of the end of the emotional regime of Romantic sensibility and the origins of surgical scientific modernity. It illuminates this crucial period of transition through the juxtaposition of two distinct but conceptually and ideologically intertwined moments in surgical history. These are, firstly, the debates surrounding the practice of anatomical dissection that came to the fore in the 1820s and culminated in the passage of the Anatomy Act in 1832, and, secondly, the introduction and early use of inhalation anaesthesia in the later 1840s. In both instances it highlights the powerful influence of utilitarian thought in divesting the body, both as object and subject, of emotional meaning and agency. In the former instance it demonstrates how an ultra-rationalist understanding of sentiment was set in opposition to popular ‘sentimentalism’ in order to divest the dead bodies of the poor of emotional value. Meanwhile, in the latter, it considers how the emotional subjectivity of the newly anaesthetised patient was swiftly tamed by the operations of a techno-scientific rationale.

This chapter charts the ultimate triumph of the emotional regime of scientific modernity in the form of antisepsis, Joseph Lister’s application of germ theory to surgical practice. It begins by exploring the ways in which antisepsis eliminated the patient as an emotional agent in surgery. The 1860s saw profound concern within surgery about the devastating impact of sepsis on post-operative mortality. Many of the explanations provided for this phenomenon rested on long-standing ideas about the role of the patient’s constitution and emotional state in regulating their post-operative health. However, by focusing purely on the condition of the wound, and the need to keep it free of ‘germs’, Lister’s antisepsis effectively overwrote these explanations, rendering patient subjectivity largely meaningless. At the same time, however, if emotions no longer possessed any ontological significance in surgery, the second part of this chapter demonstrates that they nonetheless played a powerful rhetorical function, as this ‘new world of surgery’ was configured in highly sentimentalised terms. This sentimentality not only served to counter widespread popular anxieties about surgery’s moral character, but also constructed Lister, the ultimate scientific surgeon and the emotional template for surgical modernity, as a quasi-divine saviour.

What can the emotions add to our understanding of the history of surgery? Opening with George Wilson’s account of the amputation of his foot in 1842, this Introduction suggests that ‘the black whirlwind of emotion’ that defined his experience of pre-anaesthetic operative surgery should prompt us to take the place of emotions in surgery seriously. It provides a brief account of the argument advanced by the book, the historiographical context in which it is situated, the theoretical framework it employs, the chronological and conceptual parameters that determine its focus, and the rich body of source material on which it draws. It also provides an overview of the chapters that follow in terms of content and argument. Overall, it establishes how Emotions and Surgery charts the changing place of emotions within British surgery across the long nineteenth century, from an emotional regime of Romantic sensibility to one of scientific modernity, demonstrating the ways in which emotions shaped surgeons’ and patients’ experiences and identities.

This Epilogue considers the ways in which historical accounts of the Listerian antiseptic ‘revolution’ have shaped our perception not only of surgical modernity, but also of the pre-antiseptic and pre-anaesthetic past. By examining a number of historical and reflective works written by surgeons in the years following Lister’s death in 1912, it shows that such accounts of surgical modernity served to flatten the emotional landscape of the pre-anaesthetic, Romantic era, consigning it to a surgical ‘dark age’ of suffering, misery, cruelty, and death. In turn, it contends that these myths have determined popular perceptions of the history of surgery. Indeed, they have shaped the very practice of surgery itself. As such, it concludes by considering how a more nuanced and informed history might inform surgical practice in the present.