THE ACCOUNTS IN this book are based on true events in the lives of well-known and not-so-well-known patients, based on historical sources, interviews and media reports, biographies and what others have written about them. They are not intended as an exact and complete reproduction of historical facts, but more as an interpretation of them from a surgical perspective. They appeared in abridged form between 2009 and 2014 in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Heelkunde, the journal of the Dutch Surgical Association, edited by Victor Kammeijer.
I would like to thank Boris Liberov for the correct interpretation of the Russian source on Lenin’s operation, Agatha Hielkema for her additional information on Dutch medical law, Marno Wolters and the Natura Artis Magistra Zoo in Amsterdam for the interview on the electric eel, my wife Laverne and my colleagues Maurits de Brauw, Eric Derksen, Eric van Dulken and Thomas Nagy for proposing useful ideas for subject matter, and Pleun Snel for reading the manuscript and providing constructive criticism.