[A network of control technologies. A new perspective on the origins of modern surgery]

This essay describes the emergence of modern surgery as the construction of a network of control technologies. The theoretica basis of this analysis makes use of Actor Network Theory and Joseph Rouse's Foucaultian approach for characterizing the laboratory as an artificial micro-world. On a concrete level, the paper first deals with the history of surgical instruments as tools for a controlled intervention into the human body. The introduction of antisepsis and asepsis make up a second example, since these technologies embody with particular clarity the increase of control that went along with the emergence of modern surgery. These examples demonstrate the use of the concept of control as an analytic category for a better understanding of the origins of modern surgery's technological success and its interpretation in the context of the emergence of modern societies.