Status Updates From Bathsheba's Breast: Women, ...

“Such horrors began to end after October 16, 1846, when in Boston, William Morton, using ether, kept a patient unconscious while a physician, grandson of Nabby Adam’s surgeon, removed a facial tumor. Morton, a Boston dentist, used ether to put patients to sleep during extractions after months of experimenting on dogs and cats.”

“There was a premium on speed. Patients could endure moments of pain, but the struggle increased with time. The Netherlands, holds the all-time record of speed. In 1759, Samuel de Wind performed a mastectomy on his wife, Berdina Tak. From the time he grasped her breast in a pair of amputation forceps to the time he placed compresses on the wound, the operation took only two minutes. She died a few weeks later.”

“In 1967, an Italian surgeon touring Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum stopped in front of Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at Her Bath, on loan from the Louvre, and noticed an asymmetry to Bathsheba’s left breast; it seemed distended, swollen near the armpit, discolored, marked with a distinctive pitting. With a little research the physician learned that Rembrandt’s model, his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels, later died…”