For fear of pain: british surgery, 1790-1850: 70 (Clio Medica) - Softcover

"...an excellent and useful book." - in: Wellcome History, Vol. 29, 2005 "...innovative historical focus [...] eloquent descriptions [...] More clearly than in any other historical account, Stanley delineates and substantiates the "inescapable tension" that surgeons faced..." - in: The Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 78, 2004 "...a very valuable and interesting book." - in: Health and History, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2003, pp.156-158 "...this book is a well-organized graphic account told with humility and intense feeling for all those facing `The Fear of Pain.'" - in: Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2004, pp.195-19

For Fear of Pain offers a social history of the operating room in Britain during the final decades of painful surgery. It asks profound questions: how could surgeons operate upon conscious patients? How could patients submit? It presents a revisionist view of surgery, hygiene, nursing, military and naval surgery and the introduction of anaesthesia.