“…Surgical interference was introduced in the treatment of cancer of the cervix in the pre-Wertheim era by Freund (1878) and Czerny (1882), about a quarter of a century before Wertheim (1900) and Schauta (1908) entered the field. Freund started abdominal removal of the cancerous uterus and was confronted with a primary mortality rate of 72 per cent.…”