Anaesthetics

• Anaesthetics


  Improving the hygiene and sanitation of hospitals helped to prevent many unnecessary deaths. But the two problems of pain and infection were yet to be solved. The answer to the first of those was anaesthetics
• Anaesthetics


  Solved the problems of Pain
• Pain was a problem for surgeons, especially because their patients could die from the trauma of extreme pain
• Natural drugs like alcohol, opium and mandrake had been long used, but effective anaesthetics that didn't make the patient very ill were more difficult to produce
• Nitrous oxide (laughing gas)

  Identified as a possible anaesthetic by British chemist Humphrey Davy in 1799, but ignored by surgeons at the time
• The gas had been dismissed as a fairground novelty before American dentist Horace Wells suggested its use in his area of work. He did a public demonstration in 1845, but had the bad luck to pick a patient unaffected by nitrous oxide - it was again ignored
• Ether


  Anaesthetic qualities discovered by American doctor Crawford Long in 1842, but he didn't publish his work. The first public demonstration of ether as an anaesthetic was carried out in 1846 by American dental surgeon William Morton
• Ether is an irritant and is also fairly explosive, so using it in this way was risky
• Chloroform


  Discovered by James Simpson, a Professor of Midwifery at Edinburgh University, in 1847 as a safe alternative to ether that women could take during childbirth
• After Queen Victoria gave birth to her eight child while using chloroform in 1853, it became widely used in operating theatres to reduce pain during childbirth
• Chloroform sometimes affected the heart, causing patients to die suddenly
• General anaesthetic (complete unconsciousness)

  Risky, so local anaesthesia (numbing of the part being treated) is better for many operations
• Cocaine


  Used as a local anaesthetic, investigated by William Halsted in 1884, but his self-experimentation led to a severe cocaine addiction
• Early Anaesthetics


  Led to a rise in death rates
• Longer and more complex operations


  1. Surgeons found that unconscious patients were easier to operate on

  2. Surgeons could take longer over their work
• Longer operating times


  Led to higher death rates from infection
• Surgeons didn't know that poor hygiene spread disease
• Surgeons used very unhygienic methods
• Surgeons didn't know that having clean clothes could save lives
• Surgeons often wore the same coats for years, which were covered in dried blood and pus from previous operations
• Operations were often carried out in unhygienic conditions, including at the patient's house
• Operating instruments also caused infections because they were usually unwashed and dirty
• Comment and Analysis


  Anaesthetics helped solve the problem of pain, but patients were still dying from infection. This meant that attempts at more complicated surgery actually led to increased death rates amongst patients. The period between 1846 and 1870 is sometimes known as the ‘Black Period’ of surgery for this reason