20th Century Surgery

Röntgen's X-ray ft Marie Curie

In 1895 Röntgen discovered the X-ray which would later be  crucial to the modern war effort, to locate bullets and shrapnel in wounded soldiers. Soon after, hospitals were using x-ray machines to help patients, but these were not portable and so someone needed to find a way to use them on the front line:                    MARRIEEEE CURRRIEEEEEEShe convinced the French government to aid her in  setting up France's first military radiology centers and so  she acquired money and cars out of wealthy acquaintances.She then set out persuading automobile body shops to transform their cars into vans, and manufacturers to donate equipment. By  October 1914, the first of 20 vehicles she would create was ready. The machines were nicknamed by soldiers as "petites Curies" .

Marie and Pierre Curie then developed the early stages of radiation therapy (earning them a nobel prize) when they noticed their hands were being burned by radioactive material, consequently this is what killed Marie. 

Archibald McIndoe

Archie was  pioneering plastic surgeon of the 20th Century, his work was particularly focused on war time pilot injuries.He set up what was colloquially known as 'The Guinea Pig Club' where he helped the RAF pilots who had suffered horrific burns during Spitfire and Hurricane battles. He created skin grafts for his patients which often were grown from their noses, and this excess skin then transferred to the areas where the deep burns had occurred. 

Penicillin 

After Flemming's accidental discovery of penicillin and its properties, Ernest Chain found his records, which Flemming was unable to continue due to lack of money and specialists, and so joined Florey and Heatley in Oxford to carry out pioneering research into extracting pure penicillin so it could be used to combat disease. With lack of funding due to War their few trials seemed unsuccessful. After Heatley discovered the extraction method, they needed to produce enough to carry out human trials rather than ones just on mice, this lead to catastrophe. Their first human trial, on a policeman with septicemia, was proving a triumph until their penicillin ran out. After more trials on children they decided to take their discovery to America (given its position in the war) for mass production.  The American government saw the potential and the good it could bring to the war effort and so agreed to link the team to 4 major drugs companies, and so penicillin was 'born'. 

Pioneering Surgery

Transplant surgery: First carried out in 1954 with kidney transplants, they developed with anatomical and scientific knowledge, enabling us to carry out liver transplants in the 1960s and by 1967 the first successful heart transplant was carried out in South Africa. The 1980s saw the development of Microsurgery due to advancements in technology and so today we can rejoin nerves and blood vessels, allowing us to reattach limbs  which has particularly helped soldiers in conflicts (eg. Afghanistan) . Key Hole surgery was developed in the 1990s, allowing us to carry out surgery without having to cause damage to the body, allowed by the advancement in cameras and fibre optic cabling.  Jumping back to the 1960s, a procedure known as 'tissue typing' was developed in order to help match kidney's between the patient and donor to reduce the chances of infection and rejection.