About surgical schools.

Surgical schools trace their origin to the ancient times. The Code of Hammurabi, dated around 2200 BC, contains descriptions of surgical procedures, methods of paying a doctor for performed surgeries and penalties in case of treatment failure (1). In ancient Egypt, principles of surgical conduct were described in holy books, and innovation or deviation from established principles of treatment leading to the patient’s death were subject to capital penalty. The oldest document of those times, the Edwin Smith Papyrus, is dated to 15–16th century BC. In ancient Greece, surgery was at first inevitably associated with the cult of Asclepius, the god of medicine. Around 700 BC, in Knidos, Asia Minor, the Asclepiadae founded the first secular surgical school. This was the school that produced Hippocrates (460–377 BC), known as “the father of medicine”, who laid down indisputable foundation for surgery. In the collection “corpus hippocraticum”, created 100 years after his death, Hippocrates’s students included a number of his thoughts on the principles of surgical conduct and teaching surgery. According to Hippocrates: surgery is made by the patient, operator, assistant, tools and light... The surgeon should be taught both individually and in a group... One needs to act efficiently, gracefully, quickly, easily, cleanly and immediately... “The father of medicine” paid a lot of attention to the surgeon’s hands: the nails need to be cut to the tips of the fingers; the surgeon’s fingers need intensive exercise; the index finger and the thumb are of special importance; one needs to use both hands (2). The turn of medieval and modern ages in Europe marks the beginning of barber surgeons’ guilds established under the patronage of Saints Cosmas and Damian, which were surgical schools of sort. In 1454, the Council of the Old City in Gdańsk, through their directive, established a surgeons’ guild. Recently, our school celebrated the 550th anniversary of this event. Starting from the 18th century, in France, Italy and Germany surgical schools emerged, associated with university teaching of medicine. The first such school, Academie royale de chirurgie, was established during the reign of Louis XV in Paris by a royal surgeon Georges Mareschal, in 1731 (2, 3). In the 19th century, which was a period of remarkable developments in surgery, the most famous school was one run by a professor of the University of Vienna, Teodor Billroth – the Second Surgical Clinic at the Allgemeine krankenhaus (Vienna General Hospital). This school played a significant role in the development of modern surgery in Europe and the United States. Teodor Billroth educated many eminent surgeons, including Jan Mikulicz Radecki (4, 5). In Poland, which at that time was under foreign occupation, the most famous surgical schools were established in Krakow and Wrocław, owing to the efforts of the aforementioned professor Jan Mikulicz Radecki and the father of Polish surgery, professor Ludwik Rydygier, who later was e.g. the head of the clinic of surgery at the University of Lviv. What does the term “surgical school” mean? It is difficult to give an unambiguous definition. By all means, it can be said that a surgi-