3. Narrow Your Topic

Once you've done some initial background reading on the history of surgery in general, it's time to narrow down to more specific information that your assignment requires -- for instance, how surgical breakthroughs were made in managing pain, controlling bleeding, and preventing infection.

Keywords

Think of other words related to these concepts of pain management, controlling bleeding, and preventing infection.

Pain Management

Controlling Bleeding

Infection

narcotic

anesthesia

anesthetic

ether

laughing gas

soporific

tourniquet

cauterization

prevent hemorrhaging

antisepsis

sterile

antibiotic

sterilize

Keywords work best by trial-and-error. Never do only one search. Some keywords will work better than others, and some keywords may lead you to different articles than you found in your first search. Search the databases with the keywords you selected to find relevant articles. And remember to ask a librarian if you need assistance coming up with keywords or looking for sources.