Main content

The Craft of Surgery

Sam Gallivan examines the similarities between surgery and sculpture.

Sam Gallivan examines the similarities between surgery and sculpture.

Sam is an orthopaedic surgeon, and in this talk takes us into the operating theatre to experience how it sounds, and how it feels. And it's the sense of feeling - of drilling into a bone or cutting through a ligament - where she finds unexpected similarities between surgery and sculpture. What, she asks, can each learn from the other? And how might this sense of surgery as a craft challenge the dominant way of seeing the medical world? After all, she reasons, 'to accept surgery as a craft is to accept that there are unexpected ways of knowing in medicine that we might not be able to pin down in numbers or statistics.'

Producers: Giles Edwards and Peter Snowdon.

Available now

21 minutes

Last on

Sat 22 Aug 2020 05:45

Broadcasts

  • Wed 19 Aug 2020 09:30
  • Wed 19 Aug 2020 20:45
  • Sat 22 Aug 2020 05:45

Download this programme

Subscribe to this programme or download individual episodes.

The Best of Four Thought

Explore some of the best programmes from Radio 4's Four Thought

Change a light bulb, check your emails...

What can you do in 4 minutes? Join us in some intelligent time wasting.

Seriously...

Seriously...

Discover seriously interesting documentaries from Radio 4.

Podcast