Surgery on Yourself

Ever pull a splinter out of your toe with tweezers?

How about draining a blister, pulling out a loose tooth, or squeezing a pimple? I would be shocked to hear you haven’t done any of those things in your lifetime.

You could think about these activities as very light versions of self-surgery.

Doing mundane medical procedures on ourselves is as old as we are, but surgical techniques have continued to improve over the centuries. Gradually, these techniques entered a realm that was advanced enough to allow some pretty intense and complicated medical procedures.

One excellent example of self-surgery comes from the American Revolutionary War. Deborah Sampson so badly wanted to help the revolutionary cause that she enlisted in the Continental Army using a male pseudonym.

During the course of her service, she was shot in the leg. In order to avoid being found out (and almost certainly told not to serve), she did something incredibly bold: she did a little primitive surgery on herself to remove the musket ball stuck in her thigh. Using only a pocket knife and a sewing needle, Sampson showed incredible grit and toughness at a time before anesthesia had been invented.

Library of Congress

Sampson was ultimately discovered, but not for another year and a half. Her story is remarkable.

Even still, we need to go forward in time to see the effects of modern technology on self-surgery. By the 19th century, anesthesia had been introduced to the world, and surgery began to improve dramatically. However, putting someone to sleep and then waking them up was not always a simple, straightforward matter, and it did not always work.

Fortunately, the discovery of local anesthesia changed the game once again. Local means you just numb an area, and don’t have to put the patient’s entire body to sleep.

In 1921, Dr. Evan Kane set out to show just how safe some of this new local anesthesia was, and to convince the wider medical world to adopt the practice. Surrounded by his team of medical professionals, Kane first injected local anesthesia into his abdomen, and proceeded to remove his own appendix. Kane was able to use mirrors to see everything he was doing, and he recovered quickly from the surgery.

He even thought the idea was so good, he did it again in 1932, when faced with his own inguinal hernia. Kane was not one to let a crisis go to waste, so he jumped at the opportunity to repeat his feat at the ripe age of 70. Once again, the operation was successful, and it helped to showcase how valuable local anesthesia was.

I’ve been the beneficiary of local anesthesia myself probably a dozen times, including several visits to the dentist and a couple of broken bones that had to be re-set. It’s tough to imagine cutting myself open like Kane did, but I’m nevertheless very grateful that my experiences are more like his and less like Sampson’s.

The recent example of Inés Ramírez Pérez, however, hearkens back to Sampson’s time, and her story is incredible. Inés lived in a remote village in Oaxaca (in southern Mexico) with very limited access to healthcare.

It’s important to understand that she had previously lost a baby due to complications during childbirth. Now, in March of 2000, she was going into labor all by herself, with no hope for medical help. No 911 call was going to bring an ambulance to pick up Inés.

After twelve hours of labor, she decided that it was time to take matters into her own hands, and in the most extreme way. She didn’t have the local anesthesia Kane had, so she made do with booze, and lots of it. Then, with only a kitchen knife, she cut through her abdomen and made her way to her uterus.

She delivered her own baby and cut the cord. Hours later, a health care worker arrived on the scene and stitched her up. Both mother and baby made a full recovery.

Inés's story shows incredible human resilience, but it also showcases the lack of access to medical care many people still face in the 21st century. Things are improving, but there’s so much work still to be done.

Today, I wanted to share just a few of these remarkable stories of human resilience and developing technology. Where these areas converge, things always get interesting.

Have you ever done any sort of medical procedure on yourself? Which is worse, trying to deal with an ingrown hair, or that thing that happens when you’re clipping your fingernails, and you aim slightly wrong and the side of your fingernail peels back?

Let’s talk!