This essay provides data that may help the reader identify the rot within the Council. Permitted optimism, we may hope that this essay and similar observations by others will prompt a change for the better.

Surgery for long has been a male-dominated profession. In recent years, there have been a growing number of women taking up surgery. The two textbooks reviewed in this article appear to perpetuate not only prevalent gender notions but reveal a marked insensitivity as to how women patients should be treated.