Chapter 3 Defining Difference
Competing Forms of Ovarian Surgery in the Nineteenth Century
Abstract
Ovariotomy provides a useful way of unpacking not just the process of
surgical innovation but also the usefulness of innovation as an analytical
category in the history of medicine. How might we pin down the meaning
of “innovation”—let alone “alternative innovation”—in surgery when these
innovations themselves are unstable, changing entities that are difficult to
define? Through the example of ovariotomy I show that alternative innovation
need not necessarily imply competition between diverse innovations,
but that such a framework might also be used to consider how different versions
of the “same” operation arise.