Putting Plastic Surgery on Paper

In this sensitive and nuanced book, Dr. Christine Slobogin offers us a holistic history of the intersection between art and surgery, highlighting the importance of surgical art as medicine. She excavates the story of two key and often overlooked figures in surgical art as important practitioners of the humor and art of medical and surgical practice, making visible the multitude of ways that patients can see and be seen through the historical and medical record of visual culture. * Prof Sharrona Pearl, Andrews Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies in The John V. Roach Honors College, Texas Christian University *Putting Plastic Surgery on Paper reminds us that the history of medicine needs art history. Beginning with the premise that visual culture lies at the center of plastic surgery and its archives, the book demonstrates how much we have to gain by looking closely at medical illustrations, analyzing them in relation to both clinical and non-clinical images, and reading through a critical lens the biography of the surgeon as artist. This remarkably interdisciplinary book also models deeply ethical research as historians struggle to retrieve, and safeguard, patient experiences. * Tanya Sheehan, Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art, Colby College *

Christine Slobogin, an art historian of medicine, is an Assistant Professor of Health Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.