i'm not the only one!
lots of slang terms in the dictionary!
Editorial JACS 2003 Jan 196(1)
How many surgeries have you done?
Arthur E. Baue, MD, FACS *
Fishers Island, NY, USA
Recent headlines include Broken water main delays surgeries at Barnes-Jewish Hospital[1] and Even 20 surgeries cant cut Schlereth out of the action[2] from the St Louis Post-Dispatch. Will the frequent lay use of surgeries for operations become so common that it will be adopted as common usage rather than slang by language mavens such as William Safire in the New York Times? The other slang use is being in surgery rather than being in the operating room. I have been asked how long I was in surgery and I reply, Since 1954 when I became an intern in surgery.
The use of the word surgery for an operation or the operating room is jarring for surgeons. As pointed out by Ernst, the word surgery designates the medical discipline that encompasses preoperative care, intraoperative judgement and management and postoperative care.[3] Ernst goes on to say, Why then do we permit our discipline to be demeaned by referring to this fraction of our total care by doing surgery upon the patient or taking the patient to surgery. Technical expertise is not meant to be under-rated. Ernst indicates that surgery is more than cutting and paraphrases Frederick C Coller, I can teach a janitor to operate but not practice surgery.
The English physician calls his office or treatment rooms his surgery. Here, however, the correct statement would be The doctor is in his surgery, not The doctor is in surgery. I do not know whether this expression is still in common use in the United Kingdom. The British surgeon does operations in the operating theatre, suggesting a performance. Catherine Allen, a medical editor, writes about surgeries.[4] When she edits manuscripts she uses the following guidelines: 1) surgery is surgical care, surgical treatment, or surgical therapy, the care provided by a surgeon with the help of nurses and other personnel; 2) an operation is what happens between induction of and emergence from anesthesia, incision, excision, and closurethe surgical procedure. Surgical technique is the detail of cutting and sewing. She goes on to say, Surgery is what a surgeon practices. An operation is what a surgeon performs. In this context, there is no such word as surgeries. Also, neither an operation nor a patient is a case, but that is another problem.
The late Claude Welch noted that, if we refer to Webster it is not totally incorrect to use surgery as did surgery, went into surgery, took surgery, etc. He said, But many of us rail at the loose construction of the term as it is often applied. Websters primary definition, before it was diminished by colloquial expressions, is that branch of medical science, surgical practice which is concerned with the correction of deformities and defects, the repair of injuries, the diagnosis and cure of disease, the relief of suffering, the prolongation of life by manual and instrumental operations.[5] Welch summarizes, Surgery is a science, an art, a type of practice and a profession with many distinct attributes. To call any one of them surgery is to diminish the value of the whole. Do not confuse the procedure, an operation or its site, the operating room, with a revered science.
The Second College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines surgery as: 1) The medical diagnosis and treatment of injury, deformity and disease by manual and instrumental operations. 2) An operating room or laboratory of a surgeon or of a hospital surgical staff. 3) The skill or work of a surgeon. 4) Chiefly Britisha physicians office. As a noun, the word surgery could also include the treatment of other than human disease by methods analogous to those of the surgeon, ie, tree surgery. Surgical means: 1) of or pertaining to surgeons or surgery; 2) resulting from a surgical operation or an injury. A surgeon is one who practices surgery.
Surge comes from the Latin surgereto raise, rise. The term surgeon comes from an Anglo- French word surgien. This is a contraction from the old French serurgien or cirurgien, an ien derivative of cirurgie. Gunn[6] cites the German chirurg going back to the Latin chirurgia and the Russian khererg. Surgery comes from the old French surgerie, which is a contraction of the French serurgiere or cirurgeire. Chirurgeon comes from the French chirurgien, which is from the Greek cheir, which is hand and ergon, which is work. So, the exact origin is one who works with his hands.
Gunn points out that Shakespeare in Julius Caesar wrote: Flavius, thou art a cobbler, art thou? Truly sir, all that I live by is with the awl, I am indeed sir, a surgeon to old shoes. From shoes to feet Gunn points out that the specialty became chiropody and penmanship is chirography, not to be confused with choreography, the production of the noble art of dance and theater. For the supernaturally inclined there is also chiromancythe magic of palmistry. Partridge, in his book Origins, indicates that surgery is a manual skill: indeed the noblest of all manual skills. The French use the term operateur for a surgeon more commonly than we do. The barber surgeons are gone but going back to 1745, and now, British surgeons wish to be called Mister, not Doctor, because of that heritage. Surgeons in England were not recognized years ago by the controlling medicine establishment. Gunn writes, In mythology surgery is personified by the centaurhalf man, half horse Chiron, noble teacher Asklepios, Achilles, and patron of chirurgerie the worthiest handiwork of all.
Can we stave off these incursions on language and the sloppy use of terminology related to our profession? The only way we can do this is to continue to point out the correct use of these words, to deplore the lax terminology used by the lay press and by others, and to correct those who use these terms incorrectly. Unfortunately, slang expressions come into common use and are adopted by society. Fortunately for us, the slang expression surgeries has not yet reached good dictionaries. I hope, we can keep that from happening by maintaining the correct use of surgery and surgeons.
Pronunciation Key 
