History Main / MeatgrinderSurgery

* Deliberately invoked by a cancer patient in [[https://notalwaysright.com/a-very-special-brain/31925/ this]] ''[[NotAlwaysRight/SisterSites Not Always Friendly]]'' story, as part of his quest to make the nurses laugh every time he goes in for radiation treatment.

Naturally, expect this aspect of medicine to be thrown away in the name of [[RuleOfFunny comedy]]: the nurse will give the surgeon a [[DropTheHammer hammer]] and he'll immediately proceed to whack away violently, then an [[AnAxeToGrind axe]] and proceed to hack away, then a [[ThisIsADrill drill]], then a [[ChainsawGood chainsaw]], then [[NoodleImplements an eggbeater]], then...

%%(ZCE)* ''Webcomic/Level30Psychiatry'', being a video game MassiveMultiplayerCrossover, has both [[VideoGame/TeamFortress2 the Medic]] and [[VideoGame/SurgeonSimulator2013 the surgeon]]. The results [[https://lvl30psy.thecomicseries.com/comics/129/ speak for themselves]].

* ''Webcomic/Level30Psychiatry'', being a video game MassiveMultiplayerCrossover, has both [[VideoGame/TeamFortress2 the Medic]] and [[VideoGame/SurgeonSimulator2013 the surgeon]]. The results [[https://lvl30psy.thecomicseries.com/comics/129/ speak for themselves]].

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Brain surgery involves drilling a hole in someone's head. The drill functions exactly the same as the one you use at home; just a little fancier, a '''lot''' more expensive, and more carefully cleaned [--or so the patient very sincerely hopes--]. Plus, the anesthetic.
* Amputating limbs is done with an electric saw. It also looks and acts a lot like a regular hand tool. Before those, sawtoothed knives were used for the amputations. There's a reason why in times past, one common nickname for a doctor was "sawbones".
* A few prehistoric skulls have been found with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanation trepanations,]] or holes cut through the skull. This was of course done with primitive implements, yet the bones show signs of long-term healing, which means the patient survived the surgery - and the procedure is genuinely useful for those with brains that are swelling due to trauma, as it can relieve the pressure.
* Battlefield surgery until surprisingly recently could be like this. They would amputate with a saw and cauterize with a branding iron; a popular myth was that this was done [[FateWorseThanDeath with no anesthetic]] other than rum and opium, which weren't always given. The truth is, ether was available as early as UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, and the use of forceps to tie off the blood vessels and arteries (invented, among other places, in Ancient Egypt) had been rediscovered in the 1600s. Not that it helped survival rates much, due to the lack of mandatory sterilization of medical instruments. Battlefield surgery wasn't ''pretty'', but it wasn't "biting the bullet" either: it was the recovery process in the hospitals that was more likely to kill you, actually, as you waited around to see if you got gangrene or not and tried not to catch anything from the sick and wounded people all around you.
* Before anesthesia, the surgeon needed to tie down the patient or have assistants restrain them before he operated. For added fun, there was no such thing as blood transfusion to replace what was lost in the surgery; no bottled oxygen to keep the blood that was still inside the patient capable of sustaining the body; and germ theory had not yet arrived, let alone impressed upon surgeons the vital importance of washing their hands. Oh, and in a lot of places, surgeons acquired their knowledge of anatomy from inaccurate and dated textbooks (or had to just cut in and start learning on the job) because dissecting corpses, a standard learning aid today, was illegal or at least extremely difficult. The primary talent that a surgeon used to need was ''speed'' because if you cut fast, sawed fast, and closed up fast, there was some chance that your patient wouldn't die. And some operating theatres were literally theatres in that people could pay to watch a surgery for entertainment. Although the real "dark age of surgery" is considered to be the twenty or so years between the discovery of anaesthesia in the 1840s and the recognition of germ theory and the need for antisepsis in the 1860s. In between, surgeons were able to try longer and more complicated procedures on anaesthetised patients... but they almost always resulted in massive infection and patients died in droves.
* The removal of wisdom teeth involves use of a luxator, a tool that looks very much like a stainless-steel chisel, to dislodge the root of the tooth. The same chisel is used to drain tooth abscesses, under anesthesia, to scrape the jawbone. [[{{Squick}} It sounds and feels like using a file on the patient's mouth]].
* Orthopedic surgery (in layman's terms, ''skeletal'' surgery) can appear this way, with the use of power tools, hand tools, and hardware similar to those seen in a workshop (although sterile and much more expensive), as well as the use of what appears to be strenuous amounts of physical pulling and tugging by surgical staff (to ensure proper alignment of joints and bones, etc.). For this reason, it is said that an orthopedic surgeon must be as strong as an ox, [[StealthInsult and twice]] [[DontExplainTheJoke as smart]]. On a related note, the world's first chainsaws were bone-cutting devices known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteotome osteotomes.]] They're scaled down and hand-cranked, but the basic concept is the same.
* Several appendectomies were performed onboard US submarines during World War II by crewmates with pharmaceutical knowledge, textbooks and improvised tools.
* Self-appendectomies have also been performed in isolated places and with improvised tools, for example by a Russian doctor in Antarctica and an Australian soldier in the Philippines during WWII.
* On ''Series/UntoldStoriesOfTheER'' which is mostly true when the ER doctors have to perform surgery right there and then. A splash-and-slash is the modern equivalent of this. (A splash-and-slash is where they barely have enough time to splash antiseptic onto the patient before cutting them open. Only done when the patient is going to die or is already technically dead before the surgeons are even called.)
* Cataract is a condition where the eye lens becomes clouded and results in loss of sight and treated through surgery. The earliest cataract surgery was 800 BC, using a curved needle to [[EyeScream scrape the insides of the eye.]]
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston Robert Liston]] was one of the first surgeons to adopt anesthesia into his procedures. Unfortunately, he also prided himself on the speed of his amputation procedures, often at the expense of caution and, in turn, his patients. In the most infamous example of this, he performed a leg amputation in under three minutes, during which he accidentally sliced off an assistant's fingers and slashed the coattails of a spectator. Both the patient and assistant died of gangrene after the procedure, while the spectator was literally scared to death: that's a mortality rate of '''''[[EpicFail 300% in just one surgery]]'''''!
* There was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-inflicted_caesarean_section a woman in rural Mexico]] who was having some childbirth complications. She was miles away from any hospital and had no car or phone. Her husband was away at work, and her nearest neighbors were a good distance away. So she drank some tequila and performed a caesarean section ''[[SelfSurgery on herself,]]'' but both she and the baby were fine.
* Many cultures have various forms of genital cutting/modification, often performed as a rite of passage. Often, these are performed by traditional practitioners (traditional healers/midwives, shamans, etc.) or relatives/family friends...and in this case, the implements are usually not washed or sterilized in between. (Sometimes, a mass cutting ritual takes place, where the same knife is used over and over.) Not helping matters is the fact that many times, these procedures are ''not'' performed under an anesthetic. Special mention goes to the most extreme forms of FGM/C: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#Type_III Type III or infibulation]]. (Warning: '''very''' disturbing content)
* The practice of "gishiri cutting," which is performed in parts of Africa for therapeutic reasons (although there is no evidence that it ''actually'' helps any of the gynecological problems it's supposed to alleviate...in fact, it tends to make them worse, or create some ''interesting'' new ones). A knife is placed ''inside the vagina'' and then drawn back out again, as many times as deemed necessary.
[[/folder]]

If anaesthesia is administered, it's either by a [[TapOnTheHead sledgehammer to the head]] or [[DrFeelgood copious amounts of booze]]. For an extra gag, the booze may turn out to be [[DrunkenMaster for the surgeon]].

* PlayedForDrama in ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'': After his near-fatal duel with Obi-Wan on Mustafar, Darth Vader is rushed to Coruscant for emergency surgery to turn him into a {{cyborg}}. Vader is fully conscious and screaming in pain throughout the procedure; in fact, Palpatine had specifically ''ordered'' the medical droids to keep him awake during the surgery, knowing that the pain would fuel his rage, and thus his power.

[[caption-width-right:350:"[[FunetikAksent Anyvay]], [[OhCrap zat's how I lost my medical license."]]]]

* PlayedForDrama in ''Film/SawIII''. Lynn Denlon is abducted and held hostage by Amanda Young under the threat of death so she'll provide medical attention to John Kramer, whose health is rapidly declining due to his advanced cancer reaching his brain; without a surgical theater or any real operating tools, she's forced to use a power drill and small circular saw to cut away a piece of his skull and relieve the cranial pressure.

!!Examples

* PlayedForDrama in ''Film/SawIII'': Lynn Denlon is held hostage under the threat of death so she'll provide medical attention to John Kramer, whose health is rapidly declining due to his advanced cancer reaching his brain; without a surgical theater or any real operating tools, she's forced to use a power drill and small circular saw to cut away a piece of his skull to relieve the cranial pressure.

* Battlefield surgery until surprisingly recently could be like this. They would amputate with a saw and cauterize with a branding iron [[FateWorseThanDeath with no anesthetic]] other than rum and opium. Which wasn't always given.
** This is a popular myth, but not exactly based in historical fact. Ether was available as early as UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, and the use of forceps to tie off the blood vessels and arteries (invented, among other places, in Ancient Egypt) had been rediscovered in the 1600s - not that it helped survival rates much, without the sterilization of medical instruments being a given. Battlefield surgery wasn't ''pretty'', but it wasn't "biting the bullet" either. It was the recovery process in the hospitals that was more likely to kill you, actually, as you waited around to see if you got gangrene or not and tried not to catch anything from the sick and wounded people all around you.
* Before anesthesia, the surgeon needed to tie down the patient or have assistants restrain them before he operated. For added fun, there was no such thing as blood transfusion to replace what was lost in the surgery; no bottled oxygen to keep the blood that was still inside the patient capable of sustaining the body; and germ theory had not yet arrived, let alone impressed upon surgeons the vital importance of washing their hands. Oh, and in a lot of places, surgeons acquired their knowledge of anatomy from inaccurate and dated textbooks (or had to just cut in and start learning on the job) because dissecting corpses, a standard learning aid today, was illegal or at least extremely difficult. The primary talent that a surgeon used to need was ''speed'' because if you cut fast, sawed fast, and closed up fast, there was some chance that your patient wouldn't die. And some operating theatres were literally theatres in that people could pay to watch a surgery for entertainment.
** Although the real "dark age of surgery" is considered to be the twenty or so years between the discovery of anaesthesia in the 1840s and the recognition of germ theory and the need for antisepsis in the 1860s. In between, surgeons were able to try longer and more complicated procedures on anaesthetised patients... but they almost always resulted in massive infection and patients died in droves.
* The removal of wisdom teeth involves a tool that looks very much like a stainless-steel chisel.
** The same chisel is used to drain tooth abscesses, under anesthesia. The patient [[{{Squick}} can hear it scraping the jawbone]].
* Orthopedic surgery (in layman's terms, ''skeletal'' surgery) can appear this way, with the use of power tools, hand tools, and hardware similar to those seen in a workshop (although sterile and much more expensive), as well as the use of what appears to be strenuous amounts of physical pulling and tugging by surgical staff (to ensure proper alignment of joints and bones, etc.). For this reason, it is said that an orthopedic surgeon must be as strong as an ox, [[StealthInsult and twice]] [[DontExplainTheJoke as smart]].
** On a related note, the world's first chainsaws were bone-cutting devices known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteotome osteotomes.]] They're scaled down and hand-cranked, but the basic concept is the same.
* Several appendectomies were performed on board US submarines during World War II by pharmacist's mates with improvised tools and textbooks.

** He wasn't any better in the first game. The first time players see him, Zed's giving a malevolent look to a fellow how is either not long for the world or already expired...and his introduction pauses juuust as he's about to violently swing a buzz axe (a buzz saw crossbred with a fire axe, and the main weapon of the game's Psycho enemies) and carve his victim like an ugly, graying turkey. It's heavily implied that Zed's idea of general medical care isn't any better and outright explicit that he's not even a doctor, especially after he sends players out on a FetchQuest to repair the medical vending machine.

* The ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' video ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lSzUMBJnc Meet the Medic.]]'' Roughly half the video involves the RED Medic performing surgery on the Heavy, in a procedure involving a device (which, as it turns out, enables the Übercharge in-game) getting shoved onto Heavy's still-beating heart, said heart ''exploding'' and being replaced with a "Mega Baboon" heart, and Medic pushing the organ into the Heavy's chest cavity so hard he breaks off a rib. All while the Heavy is awake, mind you.

** Not to mention he allows his pet doves to roam the room during operations. [[NamedAfterSomebodyFamous Archimedes]], pictured above, even likes to hang out inside patients' ribcages. The only thing the Medic finds objectionable about this is that "It's filthy in there!"
** Mind you, the Medic's nigh-magical Medigun, plus the CartoonPhysics of the ''Team Fortress 2'' universe pretty much allows him to throw caution out the window.

** At the end of Meet the Medic, it turns out that he accidentally sewed Archimedes ''into Scout's chest''. In gameplay, occasionally a dead Scout will even have a dove pop out of the corpse!

Common culprits for the comedy version are the {{Morally Ambiguous Doctor|ate}}, MadDoctor, or DepravedDentist, while the dramatic version will more likely involve TheMedic or the FrontierDoctor. A BackAlleyDoctor might be used for either.

* The music video for Music/{{Eminem}}'s "Godzilla" ends with a scene of Music/DrDre (who is NotThatKindOfDoctor) and Slim Shady ([[SerialKiller armed with a rusty cleaver) operating on Eminem after anaesthetising him with whisky, detaching his mouth from his body, where it [[MotorMouth flops around rapping uncontrollably]] as Eminem scrabbles around after it.

* This video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyrXy1TUDlw Aberinkula]] by Music/TheMarsVolta.
* The video for [[Music/WeirdAlYankovic Weird Al's]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notKtAgfwDA Like A Surgeon]]

-->'''Heavy''': Should I be awake for this?\\

-->'''Medic''': When the patient woke up, his skeleton was missing, and the doctor was never heard from again! [laughs] Anyway, that's how I lost my medical license.

** In The Sound of Medicine promo, the Medic develops a device for reviving people in the middle of the battlefield. This process apparently uses the Medigun's normal healing ability while telekinetically reassembling the victim back to normal. ''That last part was not a metaphor'', it literally lifts the gibs back into a holographic template.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston Robert Liston]] was one of the first surgeons to adopt anesthesia into his procedures. Unfortunately, he also prided himself on the speed of his amputation procedures, often at the expense of caution and, in turn, his patients. In the most infamous example of this, he performed a leg amputation in under three minutes, during which he accidentally sliced off an assistant's fingers and slashed the coattails of a spectator. Both the patient and assistant died of gangrene after the procedure, while the spectator was literally scared to death: that's a mortality rate of '''''[[EpicFail 300%]]'''''!

[[folder:Jokes]]
* The doctor walks into the surgery ward, followed by a bloke with a huge axe. The doctor reads from the list:
--> Patient A - amputate right arm
--> *Whack*
--> Patient B - amputate left arm
--> *Whack*
--> Patient c - amputate left leg
--> *Whack*
--> I said "leg"
--> *Whack*
--> I said "left"
--> *Whack*
[[/folder]]

* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'': When Vault 101's Mr. Handy is assigned to be the vault's doctor, he ends up amputating a patient's leg instead of treating her sprained big toe on the opposite foot, killing her. In ''Point Lookout'', the Lone Wanderer undergoes a lobotomy at the hands of a BackAlleyDoctor [[MushroomSamba while under the influence of psychedelics]].

-->-- '''Ork Dok [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Gutslash]]''', ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''

* This trope is invoked in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' by Ork doctors, the painboyz (also known as Doks, or Mad Doks), whose idea of "anesthesia" is giving the patient a violent concussion. Some don't even bother to use anesthetic at all, preferring to have their patient squirming and kicking so they know he's still alive. Orks are so inhumanly tough that they not only survive but usually fully recover very quickly -- which to the doks means they have plenty of leeway for [[PlayingWithSyringes experimentation and personal amusement]] (successful ork ''head transplants'' are entirely possible). Having a Painboy in a unit gives all of its members a chance of ignoring damage- its unclear whether this is because the dok [[YouWontFeelAThing treats the injuries]], or if the nearby [[FateWorseThanDeath reminder of what awaits the injured]] encourages Orks to ignore little things like [[TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain bullets to the head]] and [[YouCallThatAWound missing limbs]].

* Doctor Zed in ''Videogame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' asks the protagonists (crazy gun-toting badasses) to assist in the operation to mend a captured Hyperion engineer's lungs; asking the player to carefully make a small incision below the sternum. Pressing the button to "Perform surgery" causes you to stab the man in the chest with a pickaxe or punch his chest open.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'': When Vault 101's Mr. Handy is assigned to be the vault's doctor, he ends up amputating a patient's leg instead of treating their sprained big toe, killing her. In ''Point Lookout'', the Lone Wanderer undergoes a lobotomy at the hands of a BackAlleyDoctor [[MushroomSamba while under the influence of psychedelics]].

* The Stroggification process in ''VideoGame/QuakeIV'' includes the victim's legs being amputated with a giant buzzsaw, needles thrust into them from a full meter away and riveting of the new body parts not unlike what's seen at a car factory. The most vaguely hygienic part of it is the cauterization of these wounds. Nonetheless, it leaves [[PlayerCharacter Matthew Kane]] 40% faster and 25% tougher than when he came in, as well as capable of understanding the {{Wingdinglish}} that is the Strogg language.