Episode
NOVA: Pioneers of Surgery: The Brutal Craft
Overview
Part one of a four-part series on the pioneers of modern surgery relives the early days, when surgery was practiced without the benefit of anaesthesia or antisceptics and patients usually died.
Details
- Series
- NOVA
- Season
- Season 15
- Episode
- Episode 12
- Air date
- 1988-09-06
- Runtime
- 55 min
Episode context
Pioneers of Surgery: The Brutal Craft is Episode 12 in Season 15 of NOVA. It aired on 1988-09-06. The runtime is 55 min.
Previous / Next
Episode 11: Can You Still Get Polio?
Most cases of polio in this country are caused by the vaccine designed to prevent it. NOVA examines the controvery surrounding the nation's vaccine policy.
Episode 13: Pioneers of Surgery: Into the Heart
Once unthinkable, open-heart surgery is now an everyday miracle. NOVA looks at the brave doctors and patients who make it possible.
More episodes from this season
Episode 10: Race for the Superconductor
NOVA charts an electronics revolution in the making as Japan and the United States race to develop a material that will conduct electricity at room temperature with zero resistance.
Episode 14: Pioneers of Surgery: New Organs for Old
From kidneys to hearts, NOVA examines the daring attempts to replace diseased organs with transplanted ones.
Episode 9: The Man Who Loved Numbers
NOVA explores the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a poor clerk from India who astounded mathematicians in the 1910s with his brilliant insight into the world of numbers.
Episode 15: Pioneers of Surgery: Beyond the Knife
Surgeons have always been eager to help patients, even at the risk of killing them. NOVA looks at some of the excesses of surgery, and at how new drugs and technologies are rendering some operations obsolete.
Episode 8: Whale Rescue
It was a blustery day in December 1986, and the New England Coast was in the midst of a winter storm, accompanied by strong on-shore gales and an unusually high tide—conditions perfect for stranding whales in the confined shallows of Cape Cod. NOVA recounts this tragic episode and the happy suprise ending for the young whales who survived after being nursed back to health by the New England Aquarium in Boston.
Episode 16: Can the Vatican Save the Sistine Chapel?
Science meets art in the controversial effort to restore Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel frescoes.
Episode 7: The Mystery of the Master Builders
Princeton professor and author Robert Mark tracks down the engineering secrets of some of the beautiful buildings in the world including Notre Dame in Paris, St. Paul in London and the Roman Pantheon.
Episode 17: Can the Next President Win the Space Race?
Thirty years after Sputnik, the United States space program is mired in uncertainty, while the Russians, Europeans, Japanese and others sprint onward and upward.
Episode 6: Battles in the War on Cancer: Turning the Tide
Breast cancer claims the lives of four American women every hour. Jane Pauley of NBC News hosts and narrates this NOVA report on stepped-up efforts to reduce the death rate from this all-too-common killer.
Episode 18: Do Scientists Cheat?
NOVA examines the troubling question of scientific fraud: How prevalent is it? Who commits it? And what happens when the perpetrators are caught?