Ephraim McDowell & Jane Todd Crawford (1809)

She had ridden roughly sixty miles believing she was overdue in pregnancy; McDowell diagnosed a cyst and operated in his home without anesthesia or antisepsis while assistants held her. The surgery lasted about twenty-five minutes.

Crawford recovered and lived more than three decades more. McDowell’s later reports helped prove that opening the abdomen need not be a death sentence, making Danville a landmark in the history of surgery west of the Alleghenies.