Talk:Self-surgery

Self-surgery was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 27, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
January 21, 2008	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

Medicine Low‑importance

	Medicine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that medicine-related articles follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and that biomedical information in any article use high-quality medical sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

revert

I'm reverting this because I think the previous text, a direct quote from Michell's book, was appropriate, parallel with the rest of the article (including the new section "Self-Surgery in Popular Culture"), and NPOV. To my reading, the version edited by 82.12.230.173 on 27 Mar 2006 seemed to advocate trepanation. Also, I am suspicious of edits that come from IP addresses and not from real Wiki users with real Wiki usernames. Jimhutchins 03:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article evaluation of Self-surgery

This evaluation was done on this version of Self-surgery at 1:00 PST on May 1, 2006. The evaluation was done by the book.

Criteria:

Well-written: The writing is a bit dry, and nowhere near "brilliant prose," but is still written at a good level and is not constipated or overly technical. It is very obvious to me and probably to most readers that the article was mainly authored by experts in the field and feels very much like a medical text. Still, although it is not the best prose, it is still very nice writing.
Factually accurate: More citations and references should be there to support some of the claims. Phenomena like self-surgery are prone to hoaxes and we should always try to back up all dubious claims with as many sources and references as possible. I cannot personally vouch for the accuracy of the article, but I certainly can say that the verifiability is simply not there.
Broad: This is a very narrow article, but it manages to cover quite a bit. I would be interested in a peer review and an answer to the question of what might be required to meet the criterion of comprehensiveness for FA status. The article is satisfactorily broad.
Neutrally written: With writing this dry, I would be amazed if this article contained bias.
Stable: Examining the last 15 edits, rounded up to account for vandalism, there are no major changes to the article. A few links have been changed, MoS compliance has been enforced, and some new text has been added. The article is in a state of slow and steady growth.
Well-referenced: I am no medical expert, but the person who compiled the references clearly was. The references are fairly solid and well-done, although using the Cite.php syntax might be a good idea for making the article's notes easier to access.
Images: There are no images.

Summary:

Well-written: Pass
Factually accurate: Fail
Broad: Pass
Neutrally written: Pass
Stable: Pass
Well-referenced: Pass
Images: Pass

Congratulations. - Corbin ∫ 1 ɱ p s ɔ ♫ ^{Rock on, dude!} 20:12, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of citations

This article needs citations, or it should be removed from WP:GA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problems

I thought there were a few problems with the way the article's written:

Organization - The sections go Genital, Abdominal, Medically supervised, Self-trepanation, Extreme circumstances. Why not switch Medically supervised and Self-trepanation to keep the body parts sections and the situations sections together?
Depth - this article consists mostly of a list of examples of self-surgery. It doesn't really touch on other aspects of the topic, such as sociological, cultural, and psychological aspects. In the lead it mentions that it can be a manifestation of a psychological disorder, but the article doesn't explain which disorders could manifest in this (leaving us morbid readers really curious!).
Short sections - The lead and trepanation sections are two sentences each, not that great. In the trepanation section, it says, "One of the most famous instances of self-trepanation is that of Amanda Feilding" and that's it. No further explanation (though it does link to her article). Probably just expanding that sentence to say "...Amanda Feilding, who..." would do it.
I hate References in popular culture sections, but that's just me. But can I ask, is there any reason that these examples were chosen? I mean, of the hundreds of references to self-surgery that probably exist in pop culture, why these? They don't seem particularly special to me.
Clarity - Under #Genital, there are two paragraphs, one starts with "by far the most common" and the next starts with "rarer still". How common or rare are these practices? Maybe some numbers would make this less confusing?
Global view - do others think the article presents a worldwide view of the subject? I'm not sure it does, all the examples seem to be from Western cultures. Since there's no discussion about cultural stuff, it's hard to tell.

Thanks to all for the work that's been put in so far, I hope it can be improved more! delldot on a public computer talk 02:31, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to be a jerk, but I'm going to put this up for delisting if nothing's done to address this soon. delldot talk 21:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment

This article was nominated for good article reassessment to determine whether or not it met the good article criteria and so can be listed as a good article. The article was delisted by the nominator (see below). Please see the archived discussion for further information.

Nom withdrawn - this was not a controversial call. Please see my comments under #Problems for suggestions for improvement. delldot talk 00:10, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Extreme circumstances

Perhaps the Ralston example should be a bit shorter, because the reader can simply read more in the Ralston article. And the other 3 examples a bit longer. Sturman (talk) 00:46, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References

I've tidied up the references. However, the "Morton WA (1991). Scrotum self-repair. Med Aspects Human Sexuality Jul 1991:15" paper is not indexed on pubmed, and I couldn't find it online. If I had a copy, I could probably remove the first citation-needed tag.

Also, I was unsure whether Eccentric Lives & Peculiar Notions should remain in the Further Information section, as it is mentioned on Trepanation#Voluntary_trepanation, and I don't think it describes any other forms of self-surgery. If it were removed, Further Reading and External Links could be merged. Jamesscottbrown (talk) 18:46, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Most common type of self-surgery is removal of testicles?

The article currently says:

By far the most common type of self-surgery is orchiectomy, removal of one or both testicles. A small number of males resort to self-surgery in an attempt to control their sexual urges or due to gender identity disorder.[1] [2] [3]

The citations given could support just the last sentence. All three are journal references, and none of them are available without a trip to a library, so nobody's likely to check them. Even with those three citations, it's still not clear what the claim that orchiectomy is by far the most common type of self-surgery is really based on.

I have to say I think it's really unlikely that orchiectomy is a more common type of self-surgery than, for instance, removal of warts, splinters, teeth, and slicing into the skin to remove ingrown hairs. Although it's obviously a lot more dramatic.

I'm going to go ahead and remove that claim unless somebody can provide substantiation. --Mr. Billion (talk) 07:31, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A section On self-surgery due to economic reasons ?

Like depicted in this article of the time : http://time.com/3327599/failing-health/ In 2012, a chinese man cut off his own leg with a hacksaw and a fruit knife because he couldn't afford the hospital fees. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.49.115.131 (talk) 19:53, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Link to Jan de Doot?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_de_Doot — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.223.173.113 (talk) 19:00, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relationship between Rogozov and Kane's appendix-removal accomplishments and "Ultimate Final Exam"?

When I was in high school in the '70's, students shared a version of The Ultimate Final Exam. It includes instructions for the Medicine portion of the exam: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your own appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.. We just laughed about it all. So I was astonished to hear that not one, but it seems two people have actually done so (though not within the stipulated time limit....). I'm guessing there's a connection (and it makes me wonder about the other questions on the exam :). Does anyone know more? ★NealMcB★ (talk) 21:14, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]