Cancer Therapeutics

This chapter investigates the invention, application, assessment, and justification of palliative surgery through the work of two practitioners: Charles Bell (1774–1842) and James Young Simpson (1811–1970). As this chapter will show, close attention to patient pain and suffering was essential to surgeons’ assessments of the efficacy of palliative surgery. Bell and Simpson performed palliative procedures partly because they were concerned by their patients’ suffering and, as suggested in Chapter 2, partly because they wanted to present themselves as enlightened, improving gentlemen. Indeed, the texts analysed here—and the promotion of palliative surgery more generally—provide an alternative portrayal to that of the crude and dispassionate Victorian practitioner.