World Anaesthesia Day 2021: Here’s How Surgeries Were Conducted Without Anaesthesia, and How it has Changed Now

World Anesthesia Day is celebrated on October 16, all over the world. This UN observance is meant to honour the maiden successful demonstration of anesthesia that took place in 1846. Did you ever wonder what was the procedure followed prior to the adoption of anesthesia?

On this World Anesthesia Day, let’s find out how surgeries were conducted without anaesthesia, and how it has changed now:

• Surgeries were into practice right from the dawn of human civilization. But to make it painless was the challenge. Several attempts were made to reduce the pain in a pre-anesthesia era.
• In India, Shushrutha (the Father of Surgery) invented a type of anesthesia that was administered before surgery (of hemorrhoids, visuco, lithotomy, closure of perforated intestine, correction of intestinal obstructions) to patients, orally. It used to be a concoction of canabis hemp in wine or alcohol.
• Shushrutha also used an alkaline thread treated with herbal medicines to relieve pain during surgical procedures.
• Then there were sponges soaked in opium and mandragora to relieve surgical agony. Egyptians used analgesics and sedations of herbs, plants.
• Samohini, another concoction of herb was used by Raja Bhoj, an Indian surgeon to induce sleep during surgery.
• Hanaoka Seisha of Osaka created Mefuts-San that induced anesthesia and skeletal muscle paralysis.
• Without anesthesia, surgeries used to be excruciatingly painful, and traumatizing. Which is why doctors refrained from surgeries unless it was absolutely necessary and unavoidable. Until the time anesthesia was discovered, surgeries had to be conducted only as the ‘last option’.
• During surgeries, it was mandatory to ‘forcefully hold down’ the patient when being subjected to the painful procedures.
• Physicians also resorted to ‘speed’ as a way out. It was reported during the 1840s that just so the patient undergoing surgery doesn’t have to bear the agonizing pain, doctors of the University College Hospital, London executed surgeries in super fast manner.
• Robert Liston, a famous doctor was known for his notorious speed, success and intensity. He could remove a limb in 25 seconds.
• This speedy operations as a matter of fact lessened the exposure of tissue to microbes and infection.

How the procedure of surgeries changed with the introduction of anesthesia:

• With the passage of time and advent of modern scientific discoveries, in 1846, a dentist William T.G. Morton performed a surgery (removed vascular tumor from neck) using sulfuric ether to anesthetize.
• In 1853 Dr. John Snow introduced obstetric anesthesia by using chloroform. He first used it on Queen Victoria during the birth of Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice.
• In 1863 Professor Gardner Quincy Colton of Cooper Institute in New York reintroduced nitrous oxide cylinder that was in use during the 1800s.
• Then there was use of cocaine as an anesthetic in eye surgery to obstruct the nerve pain. This was done by Dr. Karl Koller in 1884.
• In 1901 U.K., Hewitt Wide-bore Inhaler was invented by Dr. Frederick William Hewitt. It was a modification of  Clover Ether Inhaler.
• In 1905, Dr. Frederic W. Hewitt administered chloroform-ether on King Edward VII.
• Following which an inhaler named David Inhaler was invented by Dr. S. Griffith Davis in 1913. It had a combination of nitrous oxide, oxygen & ether.
• In 1993 ethylene-oxygen surgical anesthetic was administered by Dr. Isabella Herb. The low-dose ethylene brought about a trance-like state and induced drowsiness in patients.
• Dr. Ralph M. Waters introduced carbon dioxide absorbing apparatus (To-and-Fro Canister), and then intravenous sodium thiopental and inhalational anesthetic cyclopropane gas.
• Vaporizer anesthetic which used desflurane to relieve sensations of pain in 1993. Sevoflurane was used as an inhalation anesthetic.
• In recent times, with the advancements in the medical forefront which led to superior anesthetics, surgeries have becomes way less traumatic.

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