Trivia
The simulation is actually quite strict: Deviate a hair too much from the proper incision technique, and you'll find your license revoked or your physician alter-ego kicked back to medical school. This was done intentionally to prevent disturbed players from simply hacking away at patients to see how big a mess they could make.
There was a sequel, Life and Death II: The Brain, which explored (of course) brain surgery.
The game came with extremely realistic materials. It included an internal memo and pathology course, both typed with a dactylo, photocopied and then stapled by hand. And if you looked under the bottom cardboard in the box, you could find a real pair of surgical gloves and a surgery mask!
This game had a few digital sounds that came out of the PC Speaker, which was quite uncommon back then. There was no way to bypass it; it actually crashed my Phillips XT and I've never been able to get a refund for this game. The digital sounds dont't work well with Windows 95 either.