Trauma surgery and traffic policy in Germany in the 1930s: a case study in the coevolution of modern surgery and society.

This paper analyzes how in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century the development of surgery and modern automobile traffic were intertwined. It describes the mutual influence of traffic policy and trauma surgery under the conditions of National Socialist politics of modernization. This coevolutionary development provides an example of how the rise of much of modern surgery can be better understood by taking into account other, nonmedical developments in society.