Entry: gastrectomy (n.)
Definition: ‘The removal of a part of the stomach, as the pylorus, in cancer of the organ’ ( New Sydenham Soc. Lexicon 1885).
Other: When do you think the first gastrectomy was performed? Perhaps we should clarify, first. I mean the first successful gastrectomy. As it turns out,
"But
according to Aird' the Billroth I operation was the first successful
gastrectomy. It was first successfully performed by Billroth in 1881,
but had previously been unsuccessfully attempted by Pean. Farquharson'
also gives 1881 as the year of Billroth's first operation."
It’s
worth noting that the (un)fortunate patient died 4 months later, which
may suggest some evolution of the term “successful” over the years.
SNOOT score: 1
Page: 31
Source: Oxford English Dictionary and the British Medical Journal 1964 April 18; 1(5389) 1044, 1045 (S.D. Sarkar)
Definitive Jest is a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
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