Surgery Before Anesthesia: Agony and the First Surgical Sleep скачать в хорошем качестве

Surgery Before Anesthesia: Agony and the First Surgical Sleep

Before anesthesia became standard, surgery meant unbearable pain and a race for speed. Through Fanny Burney’s story (an 1811 mastectomy without pain relief), we glimpse the reality of operations “before anesthesia”: lightning-fast amputations, emotionally detached yet compassionate surgeons, and a belief that pain somehow “sustained life.” We then trace early attempts to ease suffering—opium, mandrake, cannabis, inhaled mixtures, and spongia somnifera—from Dioscorides to medieval manuals, often risky and unpredictable. In the second part, we follow the search for the first “surgical sleep.” From legends about Hua Tuo to the documented breakthrough of Hanaoka Seishū (1804), plant-based mixtures led to operations under general unconsciousness. Meanwhile in the West, “laughing gas” amused partygoers but hadn’t yet entered the operating room. We show how the road to reliable general anesthesia required centuries of observation, experiment, and the courage of those determined to spare patients pain. Recommended :    • The Black Death: How the Great Plague Deva...      • The History of Military Medicine: How Wars...