Clippers or The Knife? The Reform of Surgical Practice and the Difficulty of Early Wound Closure

Abstract

Salt, vinegar and wine sounds more like a recipe from the Saturday kitchen, but in 1667 it was all a surgeon could use to close wounds, along with silk and linen strips. In providing this service, barbers and surgeons found themselves confused and intertwined, struggling for professional recognition that was about to experience reform. Allegations of neglect in the aftermath of a major seafaring battle on the very shores of our capital city required the court of King Charles II to search for a solution of supreme magnitude to accommodate the hundreds of maimed sailors who were littering the streets of London. A campaign to conceal the horrors of warfare began which lead to the implementation of the Greenwich charter and the construction of a hospital which the architect Christopher Wren helped to design.