William halsted biography
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Angels and Demons: The peculiar and haunted genius of Dr. Halsted
ByKatie Pearce
/PublishedFall 2022In the logbooks of the Butler Hospital for the Insane, there appears in May 1886 the feeble signature of a "William Stewart." Like most patients at the Rhode Island hospital, the 33-year-old did not enter of his own volition but at the insistence of loved ones who witnessed his dark unraveling.
William Stewart Halsted—his full name, which he was presumably too ashamed to sign—may have been the most promising surgeon in America at that time. For six years, rotating among six different hospitals in New York City and teaching sought-after classes at night, he had been transforming the field from one of rushed butchery into a meticulous, sterilized art. A refined and intellectual young man, often seen sporting a mustache and top hat, Halsted indulged in a vibrant social life and possessed an infinite and somewhat untamed curiosity.
With that investigative
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William Stewart Halsted was a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1894 Halsted described his procedure for treating breast cancer by removing the breast tissue, chest muscles, and lymph nodes in the armpit, a procedure he named radical mastectomy, and that became the standard of care for treating breast cancer until 1970. He also made contributions to other novel medical procedures such as gallbladder surgery, blood transfusions, antiseptic techniques, anesthesia use, and using plates and screws to hold bones in position when setting bone fractures. At Johns Hopkins Hospital, Halsted established a surgical training program in which he allowed medical students and surgical residents to shadow him and perform procedures under his guidance. In the twentieth century, similar training programs spread across the country and informed the standardization of medical training. Halsted devised a surgical treatment for breast cance
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William Stewart Halsted
American surgeon (1852–1922)
William Stewart Halsted, M.D. (September 23, 1852 – September 7, 1922) was an American surgeon who emphasized strict aseptic technique during surgical procedures, was an early mästare of newly discovered anesthetics, and introduced several new operations, including the radical mastectomy for breast cancer. Along with William Osler (Professor of Medicine), Howard Atwood Kelly (Professor of Gynecology) and William H. Welch (Professor of Pathology), Halsted was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.[1][2] His operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital is in Ward G, and was described as a small room where medical discoveries and miracles took place.[3] According to an intern who once worked in Halsted's operating room, Halsted had unique techniques, operated on the patients with great confidence and often had perfect results which astonished the interns.[3]