# Were They So Torturous? Reevaluating Modern Surgery’s Underdog Story

The Swann Fellow Lecture focuses on caricature and cartoon. Zoe Copeman, Ph.D. candidate in art history and archaeology at the University of Maryland, argues the history of surgery often discusses the field’s rise from barbaric vocation to distinguished discipline, playing up the “torturous tools” early modern surgeons used to illustrate how far modern surgery has come. Drawing from the Library of Congress’s 18th- and 19th-century caricatures, this research traces changes in the public perception of surgery and how visual media across disciplines would transform the surgeon (and his tools) into a powerful metaphor of European and American modernity.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2024
- Runtime: 48 min
- By: Copeman, Zoe
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/video-9860/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Adult profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/video-9860?play=1)