Drawing on extensive research in dozens of town and state archives, this Element offers the first comprehensive study of the (mostly itinerant) surgeons or 'operators' who specialized in couching cataracts, extracting bladder stones, and fixing hernias and 'harelips' in the Holy Roman Empire in the period between 1500 and 1750. It highlights their unique place in the medical market, outlines the considerable differences in their training, expertise, and reputation, and describes the various operations they performed. It studies their interactions and financial arrangements with the patients and their families, analyses conflicts arising from bad outcomes and insufficient warnings about the risks involved and looks at the ways in which local and territorial authorities sought to keep inexperienced and incompetent operators from practicing, while securing access to the skilled ones, whom they sometimes even employed against a salary.
