Wangensteen

“Wangensteen only too willingly took on cases that other surgeons had abandoned as hopeless. He believed timidity had no place in this field – that when in doubt, it was better to take more than less, for cancer cells could be lurking anywhere. Among the operations he sanctioned for the worst malignancies were the hemicorporectomy, which basically involved cutting a person in half, discarding both legs in their entirety; and the ev iscerectomy, in which the surgeon removed the bladder, the reproductive organs, the lymph nodes, the spleen, the rectum, a kidney, and all but about a foot of the colon” (Miller, 40).