The use of anaesthetics before 19th century

From ancient times anesthesia in surgery has been attempted by various agents or anaesthetics.

From 9th to 13th century, the soporific sponge was the usual mode of providing pain relief during surgery. Mandrake leaves, black night-shade, poppies and other herbs were boiled together and cooked onto a sponge.

Prior to surgery, this sponge was moistened and held over the face to induce unconsciousness. Nitrous oxide first accurately investigated by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1799. He experimented freely with it upon himself and others and ascertained its remarkable property, when inhaled of annulling pain.

Ether was administered from the early 1840s, but the impact on general medical practice began after William Thomas Green Morton publicly administered ether to Gilbert Abbot in 16th October 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

In 1858, Benjamin Ward Richardson published his studies using an apparatus that sprayed ether topically and froze the peripheral nerves by evaporation.

In 1847 James Simpson discovered the benefits of chloroform while experimenting with chemicals at home with some doctor friends. He later used it for women giving birth, and the idea spread to other operations.
The use of anaesthetics before 19th century

Ether and chloroform

Ether was known in the 13th and 14th century. That its formation was described in the 16th century by Valerius Cordus and that it was first designed ‘Ether’ by Frobenius in 1730.

Dr. Crawford Williamson Long, of Jefferson, Georgia undoubtedly deserves credit for priority in using ether deliberately and successfully for the purpose of inducing anesthesia in a surgical operation in March 1842.

He had safely extirpated a tumor from the neck of a Mr. Venables while profoundly under the anesthetic influence of ether. Dr. Crawford did not, however, publish a description of his feat until 1848.

In October 1846, Dr Morton successfully anaesthetized a patient in the Massachusetts General Hospital with ether.

In 1847, the Edinburgh obstetrician James Young Simpsons first used chloroform for general anesthesia during childbirth. Chloroform was first prepared in 1831 by the American chemist Samuel Guthrie (1782-1848), who was attempting to create an inexpensive pesticide by mixing whiskey with chlorinated lime.

Chloroform was inflammable and put people to sleep relatively quickly, both advantages that allowed it to replace ether the most commonly used anesthetic.  The used of chloroform during surgery expanded rapidly thereafter in Europe.  

In the United States chloroform began to replace ether as an anesthetic at the beginning of 20th century; however it was quickly abandoned in favor of ether upon discovery of its toxicity.

Ether is still the preferred anesthetic in some developing nations due to its high therapeutic index.
Ether and chloroform

History of Anesthesiology

History of Anesthesiology
Anesthesiology is a knowledge or study how to have a condition of having sensation blocked. Other definition is “reversible lack of awareness”. This will allow patients to undergo surgery and procedures without feel pain.

In ancient Incas, shaman coked up chewed coca leaves and drilled holes in the heads of their patients while splitting into the wounds they’d inflicted.

Dated in 4200 BC, Sumerian people used opium poppies as herbal remedy. Opium then was introduced to China in 330 BC and India in 600 BC.

Assyrian and Egyptian physicians obtained artificial sleep for their patient by quickly compressing the Carotid vessels of their neck. This practice was followed as well by the Greek physicians. Arab translation of the Greek medicine helped to make Islamic physicians supreme in the middle ages.

Abulcasis and Avicenna wrote about anesthesia in their book: Al-Tasrif and The Canon of Medicine. Baghdad at that time became the world’s leading medical and drug center. With the skill of the Arab Alchemists, the art of drug making began to evolve into the science of Pharmacology. Western physicians emerging from the Middle Ages found the Arab pharmacopoeia, in which a list of medicinal plants composed the anesthetic armamentarium.

British Chemist Humphry Davy in 1799 discovered a nitrous oxide or a laughing gas that have anesthetic quality. The discovery was ignored until Connecticut dentist Horace Wells began to experiment using nitrous oxide as an anesthetic during tooth surgery.

In 1846, dentist, William Thomas Green Morton performed the first public demonstration of diethyl ether (then called sulfuric ether) as an anesthetic agent, for a patient undergoing an excision of a vascular tumor from his neck. Chloroform was introduced as a surgical anesthetic by Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson in 1847. Although it can eased pain of labor, chloroform had higher risks than those associated with ether.

The first effective local anesthetic was cocaine. Isolated in 1859, it was first used by Carl Koller, at the suggestion of Sigmund Freud, in ophthalmic surgery in 1884.

Chemical substance that has a morphine-like action, Opioids was first used by Racoviceanu-Piteşti, who reported his work in 1901.
History of Anesthesiology