ABOUT BOOK

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.