Military surgery as national romance: the memory of British heroic fortitude at Waterloo

This paper shows the ways that tales of stoicism during surgery at the Battle of Waterloo came to be a significant part of the ideological framework of Romantic Militarism. Celebrating the killing of enemies clashed with ideals of politeness, but hailing a soldier’s powers of endurance in surgery was an acceptable way of extolling courage, framing lived experience of agony into narratives of exalted pain, masculine fortitude and quasi-religious patriotic feeling. In Britain, an extensive discourse emerged about the supposed Britishness of surgical sangfroid at Waterloo, providing a narrative of national superiority in the decades of imperial expansion that followed.