ANCIENT ANESTHESIA: OPIUM TO LAUGHING GAS

Author: Nikki Jiang

Editors: Shirley Chen and Ivan Feng

Artist: Tiffany Chen

Modern medicine would not be what it is today without anesthesia. It prevents patients from feeling pain during surgery, making it an extremely important medical milestone Anesthesia is a temporary and controlled loss of sensation and is administered in one of three ways: local, regional, or general Today, nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and morphine are commonly used anesthetics. Before these modern discoveries, surgeries were performed as a last resort, and the patient remained conscious throughout the entire procedure, a trauma-inducing experience for both the patient and the doctor

In Fanny Burney's vivid recollection of her operation, she states, “When the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittently during the whole time of the incision … so excruciating was the agony … I then felt the Knife [rack]ling against the breast bone – scraping it”. Records of these surgeries were rare because the patients that survived rarely reflected on the experience to avoid resurfacing the traumatizing memories that they had suppressed

Early anesthesia can be traced back to the Babylonians, Greeks, Incas, and Chinese. Opium from poppy seeds and mandrake plants soaked into sponges were used in surgeries for pain relief. In Asia, Indian hemp was commonly used. During medieval times, alcohol was orally given during surgery Before modern anesthesia, soldiers in battle had no choice but to bite down on a bullet to distract from the pain Doctors could not provide more than herbs and alcohol to ease patients’ pain until the mid-1800s with the discovery of sulfuric ether

In the early 1800s, alcohol was combined with other substances to create a more potent anesthetic In 1831, whiskey was combined with chlorinated lime to make an early form of chloroform. Scottish physician Sir James Young Simpson was the first to use chloroform on his patients. Patients experienced the narcotic effects of chloroform within a short time by inhaling it through a handkerchief soaked in the solution, numbing their pain The use of chloroform was extremely dangerous and proved fatal with the wrong dose However, the skill of physicians improved as chloroform was studied further, and its use soon became widespread. It was used on the battlefields during the MexicanAmerican War, Civil War, and Crimean War. Most famously, Queen Victoria was sedated with chloroform during the birth of her eighth child

Chloroform and other ancient methods of anesthesia are no longer in use today However, they paved the way for our modern anesthesia to ensure a safe and pain-free process during surgery.