Definition of "surgical operation" []

• A medical procedure involving an incision with instruments; performed to repair damage or arrest disease in a living body (noun)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "Some European doctors were saying that "germs," tiny living organisms that could be seen only through a microscope, were the causes of certain diseases and of the infections that made even the simplest surgical operation dangerous."
• "He had learned that every ~known~ physical pain was bearable; if one knew beforehand exactly what was going to happen to one, one stood it as a surgical operation -- for instance, the extraction of a tooth."
• "It was a surgical operation which had to be done once and for all; but in the good old days before the Revolution just as many died in any dry year -- only senselessly and pointlessly."