It's Monday, October 15th, 2018, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indrae Viscontas.

And I'm Kishorahari. Each week, we bring you a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor. We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

You can find us online at inquiring. Show, on Twitter

at Inquiring Show, and on Facebook. You can also get an ad-free version of the show by supporting

us at patreon.com slash inquiring minds. And you can subscribe to the show on iTunes or any other

podcasting app. So one of my favorite things to do is to look back into the history of medicine for cool

stories of bizarre cases.

Is this the Phineas Gage obsession come to life?

Yeah.

And most of the cases that I talk about or read about are cases of neurological impairments or changes.

But this time, I actually interviewed a surgeon

to talk about the history of surgery. Now, you probably know that surgery itself did not start

out the clean, pristine, highly respected subfield of medicine that it is today. You mean the field

that used leeches for decades didn't start

out the most respected field in the world? Yeah, or like in opera, the most famous surgeon is also a

barber. So in the, you know, a couple hundred years ago, your surgeon also gave you a good shave.

He was also a baker. Let's not, let's not, let's not,

let's not hate on Sweeney Todd too much. So how did it go from this transition of being

so maligned to being something that is like one of the most lucrative positions, let alone

respected positions in medicine now? Yeah, well, it's a really interesting history. Although I have

to say, I wasn't thinking

...