Self-surgery is the act of performing a surgical procedure on oneself. It can be an act taken in extreme circumstances out of necessity, an attempt to avoid embarrassment, legal action, or financial costs, or a rare manifestation of a psychological disorder.
Genitals These surgeries are generally the least life-threatening. Sometimes people resort to self-surgery in the form of castration in an attempt to control their sexual urges, or due to gender dysphoria. Boston Corbett, the soldier who killed Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth, had performed self-surgery earlier in life. He castrated himself with a pair of scissors to avoid the temptation of prostitutes. Afterwards, he went to a prayer meeting and ate a meal before going for medical treatment.
Abdominal Successful abdominal self-surgery is extremely rare. A few well-publicized cases have found their way into the medical literature.
On February 15, 1921, Evan O'Neill Kane carried out his own appendectomy in an attempt to prove the efficacy of local anesthesia for such operations. He is believed to have been the first surgeon to have done so. However, Kane previously performed appendectomies (on others) with local anesthetic. In 1932, he performed an even more risky self-operation of repairing his inguinal hernia at the age of 70. In August 1944, Jock McLaren, an Australian Army officer, conducted an appendectomy on himself without anaesthesia of any kind, using only a pocket knife and a mirror. He then proceeded to suture himself with what he had on hand - "jungle fibre". Though not qualified in human medicine or surgery, McLaren had considerable knowledge of veterinary medicine. On April 30, 1961, Leonid Rogozov removed his own infected appendix at the Soviet Novolazarevskaja Research Station in Antarctica, as he was the only physician on staff. The operation lasted one hour and 45 minutes. Rogozov later reported on the surgery in the Information Bulletin of the Soviet Antarctic Expedition. A student who had already performed a self-castration was the subject of a 1979 case report by Kalin. The student, some time after the self-castration, also attempted to reduce the activity of his adrenal glands with an injection of bovine serum albumin, luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone and Freund's adjuvant. When this produced an abscess at the injection site, the student resorted to self-surgery. His psychiatrist reported: At four o'clock on the morning of his surgery, he disinfected his dormitory room with spray disinfectant and alcohol and draped an area with sheets that he had previously sterilized. For anesthesia, he took oral barbiturates. He also took hydrocortisone and prepared a canister of vaporized adrenalin, readying himself for a possible shock syndrome. He performed the procedure wearing sterile gloves and a surgical mask. Lying supine and looking into strategically placed mirrors to obtain an optimum view, he began by cleansing his abdomen with alcohol. The incision was made with a scalpel, exposure obtained by retractors, and the dissection carried out with surgical instruments. For local anesthesia, he injected lidocaine hydrochloride into each successive tissue layer during the opening. He controlled bleeding with locally applied gelatin powder, while sterilized cotton thread ligatures were used for the larger vessels. After eight hours he had had minimal blood loss but was unable to obtain adequate exposure to enter the retroperitoneal space because of the unexpected pain in retracting his liver. Exhausted, he bandaged his wound, cleaned up his room, and called the police for transport to the hospital because of a "rupture". In 2000, a Mexican woman, Inés Ramírez, was forced to resort to self-surgery – a "self-inflicted caesarean section" – because of lack of medical assistance during a difficult labour: "She took three small glasses of hard liquor and, using a kitchen knife, sliced her abdomen in 3 attempts ... cut the uterus itself longitudinally, and delivered a male infant. Both mother and child reportedly survived and are now well."
Medically supervised Jerri Nielsen was the sole physician on duty at the U.S. National Science Foundation Amundsen–Scott Antarctic research station in 1999 when she found a lump on her breast. She was forced to biopsy the lump herself. Her experience made international news and was the basis for her autobiography, Ice Bound. The lump was found to be cancerous, so she self-administered chemotherapeutic agents. She remained cancer-free for several years but died in 2009 after her cancer reappeared and spread to her brain.
Self-trepanation
Trepanation involves drilling a hole in the skull. The most famous instances of self-trepanation are those of Amanda Feilding, Joey Mellen (Feilding's domestic partner), and Bart Huges (who influenced Mellen and Feilding). In 2023, Michael Raduga performed self-neurosurgery that included electrical stimulation of the motor cortex.
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