Short answers, pulled from the story.
Surgery is a medical specialty that uses manual and instrumental techniques to diagnose or treat pathological conditions such as trauma, disease, injury, and malignancy. As a general rule, a procedure is considered surgical when it involves cutting a person's tissues to treat a disease or injury. It can also alter bodily functions, reconstruct appearance, or remove unwanted tissues, neoplasms, and foreign bodies.
Surgery is grouped by timing into elective, emergency, and urgent procedures. Elective surgery corrects a non-life-threatening condition at the person's convenience. Emergency surgery must be done without delay to prevent death or loss of limbs and functions, while urgent surgery is better done early but can be postponed for a short period.
A modern surgical operation typically pairs a surgeon with a surgical assistant, an anaesthetist, a scrub nurse who handles sterile equipment, a circulating nurse, and a surgical technologist. Procedures that require cardiopulmonary bypass also include a perfusionist.
Modern surgical anesthesia was discovered in the mid-19th century, with practical use beginning in the 1840s. Ether was first used by the American surgeon Crawford Long, and chloroform was discovered by the Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson and later pioneered by John Snow.
British surgeon Joseph Lister pioneered antiseptic surgery in the 1860s, spraying carbolic acid on his instruments after reading the work of Louis Pasteur. On the 9th of August 1867 he read his paper on the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery before the British Medical Association in Dublin. Earlier, in 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis had introduced compulsory handwashing in maternal wards.
About 5 billion people lack access to safe and affordable surgical and anesthesia care, according to the 2015 Lancet Commission on Global Surgery. The poorest countries hold over one-third of the world's population but account for only 3.5% of all surgeries performed, and 143 million additional procedures are needed every year.
The oldest surgical treatment for which there is evidence is trepanation, in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull to expose the dura mater and treat problems related to intracranial pressure. Surgical treatments date back to the prehistoric era.