Surgery as we know it today is at the forefront of medical science and is an essential and relied-upon aspect of healthcare. This, however, was not always the case and patients undergoing surgery were often worse off for having undergone an operation. The practice of surgery was typically shunned by medical physicians and performed solely by barbers. Even the Hippocratic oath condemns the practice of surgery and forbids the use of “the knife”. The evolution of surgery into to what it is today is the result of numerous scientific innovations occurring over the past centuries, which will be the subject of this presentation. Today we take knowledge of human anatomy for granted, but this was not always the case. Teachings of early human anatomy for centuries were erroneously dominated by Galen’s work, but it wasn’t human anatomy was formally studied with dissection by the likes of Vesalius and Harvey that an accurate understanding of human anatomy began to emerge. Similarly, human understanding of disease and pathology were misguided for most of our existence. It wasn’t until pioneering work by Semmelweis and Lister that we developed an understanding of organisms as cause of disease. Following on, the discovery of bacteria and subsequently medications that could kill them, allowed for medicine and surgery to evolve rapidly. Up until this development, the surgical opening of the abdominal cavity would have almost certainly been a death sentence. Anaesthesia came next, allowing surgery to be performed humanely. Today, surgery is advanced and on the forefront of technology, with assistance from cameras, electronics and even robots. These innovations will be the subject of this presentation on the history of surgery.