JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 211
The medical doctor and 19th century hero of modern plastic surgery, Dr. Ernst Blasius, published a remarkable work in 1833. Ajnurgische Abbildungen oder Darstettung der Blutlgen Chirurgischen Operationem, u. a. w. Akiurgicol Figures, (or Representations of the Bloody Surgical Operations, and the Instruments devised for their performance, with Illustrative Text.) was a careful, historically grounded, masterful textbook, illustrated with 50 engravings of procedures and—perhaps most famously—surgical instruments. It is considered a foundation work of the 19th century, especially in regarding to procedures to the eye, and especially for the development of modern plastic and reconstructive surgery. 
As important as this book was, it received a very singular, peculiar and anonymous review in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Exhibiting a Concise View of the Latest and Most important Discoveries in Medicine, Surgery, and Pharmacy (1836, volume 44, pp 539-544). The reviewer (somehow, in ways that I cannot know or understand) found the illustrations of the instruments to be an abomination.
Recounting that the surgeon’s “art” is a simple response to the inability to actually cure something with medical treatment—the reviewer states that the surgeon simply cuts things out. He then makes a statement that I think is unique to my experience, saying that the gorgeous and painstaking illustrations of surgical instruments were calculated to repel the student “with an appearance both formidable and something repulsive.” He continues: “If, however, this publication, by exhibiting instrumental surgery in its most complicated, formidable, and repulsive character, may damp the ardour of the surgical aspirant, it is also, by presenting all the various forms with which instruments have been endowed, useful in showing the surgeon the very height of the evil which he has to encounter. By placing before him such numbers and varieties of instruments, it may enable him to choose that which, upon mature consideration, seems best calculated for the proposed purpose.” The unnamed reviewer does acknowledge the great understanding and historical grounding and command of deep literature, as well as the surgical techniques that Balsius presents in the book, and even goes so far as to describe them as “unrivaled”. But he keeps returning to the illustrations, and particularly the images of the instruments, which he just simply cannot tolerate. He ends the review saying that it would be a huge benefit to republish and translate the Balsius in English, and, given that opportunity, a great many of the instrument illustrations should be left out. “The explanatory descriptions, by which these illustrations are accompanied, show extensive and accurate knowledge of the literary history of operative surgery. All the operative methods and their peculiarities are carefully explained; and whoever studies this work cannot fail to understand thoroughly the merit of the different methods proposed for accomplishing each operation. This leads us to think that a republication in this country,! with a translation of the explanatory details, would be extremely useful ; and, in such circumstances, the number and variety of the instruments represented might be greatly diminished, while the anatomical figures and the views of operative processes might be retained.”
The hatred of the surgical tools images is almost incoherent—especially since they were of such high importance, and that the book was being reviewed by a doctor for doctors and in a medical journal
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