How has surgery changed over the last century?

How might it continue to change in the coming years? 

What is driving these changes?

These are some of the questions we will be asking as our Time Travelling Operating Theatre tours the country, inviting the public to experience and respond to simulations of surgery from three different eras: 1884, 1984 and 2014. These events will bring together the public, medical professionals, historians, ethicists and policy makers to discuss what we can learn from looking back at the history of surgery and how this might help us shape its future.

The Time Travelling Operating Theatre begins by inviting audiences to explore the past and present of surgery through re-enactments of three operations from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, all performed by practising or retired clinicians. These short performances open up a range of questions about how the operating theatre has changed in the last 130 years and how it might go on to develop in the future. Following these three performances there will be an open discussion between the audience, the performers, and a small panel of guests with expertise in surgical history, ethics and policy. We invite you to come and join in this important conversation about the past, present and future of surgery. 

Supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Time Travelling Operating Theatre will appear at four venues from September 2015; the Science Museum (London), the Royal College of Nursing (London), the Thackray Medical Museum (Leeds) and the National Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh).