A theatre of emotions: the affective landscape of nineteenth-century British surgery

Historians have generally emphasised the importance of emotional detachment and affective restraint in surgical practice. However, this project suggests that the affective repertoire of the nineteenth-century operating theatre was more complex than this, and involved a wide variety of feelings from fear and anxiety to pity and sympathy. It explores the place of emotion in both historical and contemporary surgery through a range of historical and literary sources and methodologies, encompassing both the military and civil worlds.