The Operating Theatre Journal February 2022

Europe’s oldest surviving operating theatre
Europe’s oldest surviving surgical theatre, nestled in London’s busy
streets, is marking 200 years since its first patient was treated with no
anaesthetics nor antiseptics.
Tucked away in the attic of a church adjacent to the original Saint
Thomas’ hospital, the women’s theatre was built in 1882, 67 years after
the men’s one, when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing and
plunged women into the workplace.
“Suddenly there were many more women in need of surgical
interventions, exactly the same as those of men,” Monica Walker,
curator of the forthcoming exhibition at Old Operating Theatre Museum
and Herb Garret , tells Efe.
A modest wooden amphitheater was erected in the church’s attic
connected to the main hospital through a door to deal with the growing
number of injuries.
To mark the theatre’s 200 year anniversary, visitors will be able to
learn about the fascinating place through true stories that have been
unearthed of surgeons, nurses, medical students and patients that
worked, studied or found themselves on the operating table.
Skeletons, atlas books on human anatomy, knives used for amputations
and 18th-century tools are on display.
Viewers can imagine how final-year medical students would gather in
the atmospheric amphitheater around the operating table perched in
the middle of the room.
All sorts of procedures would have been done publicly, including limb
amputations, mastectomies, lithotomies (removal of bladder stones)
and trepanations (drilling a hole into the skull to treat head trauma).
“Students would have arranged themselves around the chamber and
would have been wearing their everyday clothes,” Walker added.
“Many of them would have come with cigarettes, smoking was allowed
inside the operating room. You can imagine that this space would have
had a lot of smoke,” she said.
Hygiene was not high on the surgeon’s agenda.
They did not wash their hands before operating on patients and reused
their blood-soaked aprons, a hallmark of a prosperous career to be
worn with pride.
According to the museum’s investigations, these were the conditions
that Elizabeth Raigen, 60, would have surely encountered when she
entered the operating chamber at noon on April 29, 1824 to get a leg
amputation conducted by Dr. Travers using natural light pouring in
through the roof skylight.
She had been admitted to Saint Thomas’ Hospital ten days earlier with
an open fracture of the tibia and gangrene which would lead to death
if left untreated.
With no anaesthetic, Raigen endured twenty long minutes of an
operation that was usually done ten times faster in around two minutes.
The Lancet medical journal later published that Raigen emerged from
the operating room alive.
“The brandy and wine administered to her revived her a little,” the
journal noted, but she lost her life three days later.
Much to most people’s surprise today though, more patients survived
after a stint on the operating table – two out of three – at the old Saint
Thomas’ hospital.
Source: laprensa latina Claudia Sacrest
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