Pain is a very painful thing, especially when you need to use a knife to cut open the muscles to treat the patient, the pain of cutting the muscles is even more unbearable. For thousands of years, humans have been arduously moving forward on the road to conquering pain.
According to literature records from various countries, before humans invented effective anesthetic drugs, doctors often tied the patient tightly so that they could not move when performing surgical operations. During the operation, the heart-wrenching screams were unbearable to hear. Some doctors have also come up with some ways to relieve patients' pain, such as immersing the patient's diseased limbs in ice water before surgery and waiting until they are numb from the cold before operating. Otherwise, just ask the patient to drink some strong alcohol and wait until he is intoxicated before operating.
In the late Eastern Han Dynasty in China, the famous doctor Hua Tuo invented Ma Fei Powder, which he administered to patients before surgery to make them comatose before surgery. Although this was the earliest anesthetic used by humans, the effect was not ideal and the pain was still unbearable. So when Guan Yu scraped the bones to cure the poison, he would rather endure the severe pain than use the numbing powder.
Acupuncture anesthesia, developed from traditional Chinese medicine, has attracted great attention from the world’s medical community. It is generally believed that the era when humans truly conquered pain was the discovery and use of ether in the mid-19th century. Speaking of which, Still an interesting story.
William Morton. Morton often extracted teeth for patients, and he thought of many ways to relieve the pain of those whose teeth were extracted. Later, he accidentally discovered that patients would not feel pain after smelling ether. Therefore, every time he extracted a tooth for a patient, he covered the patient's nose with a handkerchief soaked in ether. As a result, people came to him to extract teeth in an endless stream, and his outpatient clinic was filled with customers.
In order to protect his "patent", Morton played a trick. He added ether to the spices, so that when using it, others would not be able to tell what he was using. What is it? I can’t figure out its formula.
The news that Morton’s tooth extraction is painless spreads more and more widely, attracting public attention. At that time, there was a medical group in Massachusetts. This organization stipulated that doctors should practice medicine openly and not use deception to deceive people. According to the requirements of medical ethics, if Morton does not disclose his secret formula, it will be "cheating" and his authority to practice medicine will be stopped. Later, Morton thought over and over again, and driven by his conscience, he announced his secret recipe to his colleagues. Only then did people know that ether has such miraculous effects.
After many experiments, it has been proven that ether can be used in a variety of surgical operations. On October 16, 1846, Morton performed the first surgical anesthesia demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital. When the patient asked for a massage, took a few deep breaths and inhaled the anesthetic gas, the surgeon cut off the hemangioma on the patient's neck. The entire operation lasted 30 minutes, and the patient felt no pain at all. Everyone present applauded in amazement. Since then, ether anesthesia has spread around the world and is still used today.
In 1868, Morton died at the age of 48. The citizens of Boston engraved this text on his monument: "He was the founder of inhalational anesthesia surgery. Because of his invention, the pain of surgery disappeared from the world..."