Nineteenth-century surgical developments led to unconscious patients, sterile hospital surroundings, and painless operations. Even in the twentieth century, however, procedures still took place at home. Who underwent them, why, and where? In this lecture, Professor Brock will construct a new history of surgery by returning operations to the domestic space.

Professor Brock grew up in Wales, completing a BA and MA at Cardiff University, and a PhD at Warwick. She taught at the Universities of Warwick and Southampton, before coming to Leicester. Her interdisciplinary work has been funded by the British Academy, AHRC, and the Wellcome Trust, and she has also been awarded the Singer Prize for outstanding research into the history of science, technology, and medicine.

In 2017, Professor Brock published the first monograph on the history of women surgeons: British Women Surgeons and Their Patients, 1860-1918 (Cambridge University Press) and, in 2024, edited four volumes of primary sources focusing on the global reach of Women in Medicine in the Long Nineteenth Century (Routledge). Recent research includes articles on the history of cleft palate surgery, and on the child surgical patient in the early twentieth century, and she is currently completing a monograph on Surgery at Home, which reconsiders the domestic space as the location for surgery well into the twentieth century.