surgery

How William Morton's 1846 ether demonstration at Mass General transformed surgery from conscious agony into painless procedure — and why we still don't fully understand it.

Before 1846, surgery meant unbearable agony and a near-certain chance of fatal infection. Here's how medicine solved both problems within a generation.

How the first human-to-human heart transplant in 1967 worked, why it nearly ended the field, and what finally made transplantation routine