History Timeline of Anesthesia

Over the centuries to relive pain doctors would prescribe sleep inducing agents and narcotics from a wide range of plants such as marijuana, belladonna, and jinsons weed. In 1540 "Sweet oil of Vitriol" also known as ether was created by Valerius Cordus. Around the 1800's a scientist by the name Humphry Davy inhaled nitrous oxide "laughing gas" and felt the pain of his erupting wisdom tooth was suppressed. After this had happened he wrote that one day nitrous oxide could "someday be used to advantage in surgical procedures." (Sir Thomas Browne, 1). In 1831 Chloroform was discovered and becomes a more popular agent of anesthesia in the 1800's. The effects of the vapors were examined and the stages of narcosis were described and while doing this they were experimenting with different agents. On the date of March 30th, 1842 Crawford W.L used ether for the first time during a surgical procedure. Miss. Hobby received the ether while Elijah Pope removed a painful tooth from the woman's mouth. Crawford W.L led to the first of many small operations. December 11th, 1844 Horace Wells age 29 inhaled nitrous oxide or laughing gas while a tooth was extracted by dentist John M. Riggs. It was painfully removed from the patient. Wells discovered that inhaling the nitrous oxide pain was diminished and he came to think that this gas could be used for medical procedures. In 1846 William T. G Morton had given the public the first public demonstration of ether anesthesia. Gilbert Abbot went to Dr. John Collins Warren to have a tumor removed from his jaw and reported no pain after the surgery. Dr. Warren used the ether inhaler which contains an ether soaked sponge.
This quickly made it to the Boston Post. He learned that ether being applied to the gums would yield pain through its evaporations. Oliver Wendell Holmes through his learning gave the procedure the name "anesthesia". Anesthesia was first used in England on December 19th by James Robinson. On January 19th, 1847 Sir James Young Simpson used the first sulfuric ether in Edinburgh, Scotland and introduced Chloroform into hospitals for labor purposes. Soon following Queen Elizabeth used the agent chloroform while giving birth to her son Prince Leopold. In 1863 nitrous oxide was introduced again into the clinical practices of anesthesiologists. In 1898 J. Leonard Corning introduced spinal anesthesia for the use of doctors. He devoted much of his life and time to the development of this anesthesia.

Over the past 150 years anesthesia has come along way for our society. Anesthesia has had a great impact on the way surgical procedures were and are now conducted. It has given us the gift of pain free surgeries in order to provide a healthier clinical environment for the patients that are being operated on. Anesthesia effects the hospital environment because it is one of the main reasons that doctors are able to do painless extensive surgery on there patients without this agent we would not be able t conduct such surgeries that we conduct today. There are many more improvements and upgrades that are going to come from the anesthetic medical world.