Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World

241 Pages·2008·2.05 MB·English

by  Stephanie J Snow

BLESSED DAYS OF ANAESTHESIA
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BLESSED DAYS OF
ANAESTHESIA
How Anaesthetics Changed the World
STEPHANIE J. SNOW
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© Stephanie Snow, 2008
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ISBN 978-0-19-280586-7
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For DG—my greatest blessing
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a further fruit of a project generously supported by
a Research Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust for the His-
tory of Medicine, undertaken at the Centre for the History of Sci-
ence, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Manchester.
Many institutions have provided invaluable help over the years and
I particularly thank staff of the Wellcome Institute for the History
of Medicine, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Brit-
ish Medical Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, St George’s
Hospital, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, King’s College Hospital, the
London Hospital, the Royal Free Hospital, the London Metro-
politan Archives, Westminster Medical Society, Edinburgh Public
Record Offi ce, Glaxo Wellcome, the History of Anaesthesia Soci-
ety, the John Rylands University Library, and the Liverpool Medical
Institute. Sources that I particularly drew on in the preparation of
this book are mentioned in Further Reading but I am in debt to
many more historians of medicine and other scholars whose work
and ideas have sustained my own. I am particularly grateful to Lucy
Bending for discussions on ideas of pain in the nineteenth century;
Peter Drury for advice on aspects of twentieth-century anaesthe-
sia; Charles Suckling for sharing his memories of the discovery of
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acknowledgements
halothane; and David Watts for giving permission to reprint his
poem ‘Starting the IV: Anesthesia’. My thanks to those who have
read parts, or all of this book, and whose thoughts and helpful criti-
cisms have improved its clarity and accuracy: Emm Barnes, Peter
Drury, John Pickstone, Charles Suckling, and Meriel Underwood.
Special thanks go to Emm Barnes for timely and sustaining sup-
port. I am grateful to my editors at Oxford University Press: Marsha
Filion, whose enthusiasm for the project started the ball rolling; and
Latha Menon and James Th ompson, whose well-judged nudges kept
it going. Finally, but most importantly, I thank my family, especially
Evie, Verity, and Gwyn, who have tolerated the writing process with
cheerful forbearance.
Stephanie J. Snow
Erway Hall
December 2007
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations x
Preface xi
1 Introduction 1
2 Discoveries 28
3 Anaesthesia in Action 53
4 Women, Sex, and Suff ering 75
5 On Battlefi elds 97
6 Th e Dark Side of Chloroform 121
7 Changed Understandings of Pain 148
8 Into the Twentieth Century and Beyond 165
Endnotes 195
Further Reading 207
Index 215
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