Surgery

Surgery is the part of medicine which employs operative or manual treatment of disease or injury. Although surgery was practiced in ancient times, modern anesthesia was not developed until the nineteenth century. For centuries, most types of operative surgery involved high risk to patients due to infection. With the development of antiseptic surgical methods in the nineteenth century, the risks linked to surgery diminished. Some types of surgery remain risky, but many have high rates of success. Advances in technological knowledge offer new horizons in surgery.