The document summarizes the history of anesthesia from its early uses to its modern development. It describes how early surgeries were extremely painful due to the lack of effective anesthesia. Several people were involved in the discovery of anesthesia, including Crawford Williamson Long who first used ether, Horace Wells who used nitrous oxide, and William Morton who first publicly demonstrated ether's anesthetic properties. Later, James Simpson pioneered the use of chloroform as an improved anesthetic. Technological developments led to advances like inhaled anesthetics and hypodermic syringes. Overall, the discovery of anesthesia was a major medical breakthrough that relieved surgical pain and changed medical practices.

1. Science popular
talk on
Discovery Of
Anesthesia
Presented by:
Karishma Das Purkayastha.
Roll no:06
Dept of Life Science And
Bioinformatics.

2. Anesthesia
Traditionally mean the condition of not having sensation (including the
feeling of pain) blocked or temporarily taken away. It is a
pharmacologically induced and reversible state of amnesia, analgesia,
loss of responsiveness, loss of skeletal muscle reflexes or decreased
stress response, or all simultaneously. An alternative definition is a
"reversible lack of awareness," including a total lack of awareness (e.g. a
general anesthetic) or a lack of awareness of a part of the body such as a
spinal anesthetic.

3. The Need for Anesthesia
• Relieve from painful surgery.
• Need of unconsciousness.
• Need of muscle relaxation.

4. Blast from the past
• In many surgeries, several burly men were
needed to hold down patients and surgeons had
to make themselves numb to patients pleas for
mercy.
• Alcohol and opium were used at times,
mandragora and some other herbs, which
worked a little, but not terribly well. In large
doses they had secondary problems.

6. Ether
• The small organic molecule of ether was first created in
1275 by Spanish chemist Raymundus Lullius
• Later, in 1730, German scientist W.G. Frobenius
changed the name of sweet vitriol to “ether.” And thus it
remained until the early 1800s when gradually people
realized that the vapors could generate a pleasant “high”
as a recreational drug. But application as an anesthetic
awaited four more decades.

8. Nitrous oxide
• In 1799 Humphrey Davy discovered
anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide
(N20)also known as "laughing gas.“
• A wide variety of reactions would come
with the breathing of laughing gas a
suffusion of insight, occasional
grandiosity, sometimes belligerence.

10. The Discoverer(s) of Anesthesia
• Four professionals later claimed to have
been the main one who discovered
anesthesia! Their fight went all the way to
Washington DC and to the French
Academy, and various public figures and
later historians tended to support this or
that figure.

11. Crawford Williamson Long
(1815-1878)
• He had apprentices four young gentlemen. Long
being around 29 and they around 20. As was
common, all held occasional nitrous oxide
parties, and one time they had run out of nitrous
and Long reminded them that ether might also
serve as an intoxicant. This led to his noticing
that high spirits during such frolics might result in
injury without the person seeming to feel pain.

13. Horace Wells (1815-1848)
• In 1844, Horace Wells attended an exhibition and witnessed a
participant injured his leg while under the influence of laughing
gas. Told Wells that he didn't feel any pain.
• He tried nitrous oxide on himself: he had an impacted molar
and asked a colleague to extract it, Wells first having inhaled
deeply of nitrous oxide. so he tried it first on a patient, then
several more. Emboldened, he spoke to Jackson, who ignored
the idea, but nevertheless proposed to the nearby medical
school that this substance could be a possible anesthetic.

14. Contd.
• He claimed that nitrous is too shortacting, and one must
also inhale it for quite a while. Even then, possibly
breaths need to be taken fairly frequently to maintain
analgesia it wears of fairly rapidly, too. For whatever
reason, this demonstration failed: The patient groaned
and grimaced as the surgery neared completing, and the
observers jeered. Wells was humiliated and left!.

16. William Morton
• He trained predominantly under the guidance of
Horace Wells .
• On the 30th of September 1846 a patient named
Ethan Frost came to his surgery for a painful wisdom
tooth extraction and agreed to have it extracted under
the influence of Ether.

17. Contd.
• On the 16th
of October 1846 Morton gave
the first ever public demonstration of
anaesthesia using sulphuric ether.

19. Charles T. Jackson
• He may have been somewhat active in
suggesting to both Wells and Morton the
potential for anesthesia in these gases- he
was in role to do this but he didn’t
demonstrate it or write it up early

20. Who actually coined the term?
• The term anesthesia was coined by Oliver
Wendell Holmes,Sr.
• He suggested the term to Morton.

21. Legal Disputes
• Subsequently, all four of them or their surviving family
members and associates battled in congress and up to
the Supreme Court as to who deserves official
recogniton! Wells appealed to the French Academy.
Money was a hoped for side benefit, the claimant
wishing they could get something additional along with
that recognition. It went on for years and various
notables took sides.

23. Mischievious Morton
• So the dispute was never resolved & a few
side issues of Morton was also there. He
added a bit of artificial fragrance to ether &
renamed it “ letheon”. He hoped to patent
it but the chief of the hospital held out until
he admitted that it was just simple ether.

24. Sad demise
• So, then, who is to get the credit?
• It's really a rather sad story. Wells sought
justification, but interestingly, a few years later,
discovered chloroform, which is a rather
seductive substance, and became habituated.
Wells went downhill, also using alcohol, and
finally killed himself in jail! Morton and Jackson
also struggled and also had unhappy ends. Long
died of natural causes.

25. Pictures of surgeries using NO2 &
ether

26. James Simpson
• In January, 1847, James Young Simpson (1811-
1870) proposed that Ether, however, was by no
means an ideal anesthetic. It tended to make
people cough, could feel stifling and generate
struggling in those who didn't trust the method,
and sometimes made people throw up

28. Contd.
• Finally he came upon chloroform, which he tried a few times not
only on himself, but also on some friends. He hit upon chloroform,
which knocked him out, made his friends act weird, but it was a
pleasant type of unconsciousness and it smelled better than ether.
• Simpson tried it on some patients and then on some obstetric
patients. It became accepted in many circles because Simpson was
associated with high status faculty and there didn't seem to be much
problem. Again clergy and some doctors objected, but Simpson
responded with reason and good arguments.

30. Contd..
• An interesting thing about chloroform, though: It is good,
but not as safe as some originally thought. If there’s any
adrenaline in the system, people tend to get cardiac
arrest and die.
• Also, there are occasional late complications of severe
and fatal toxicity to the liver, which leads to a distinctly
uncomfortable death. Happens a bit more in kids.

31. John Snow
Dr. John snow use chloroform as
anesthetics in 1853.
The use of chloroform became even more
mainstream when Queen Victoria used it
in 1853 to help with the birth of her son
Leopold.

33. Technological Developments
• In the wake of the new technology of the
gaseous anesthetics, a variety of inhalant
systems were invented and revised in an
attempt to promote the easiest,
smoothest, most comfortable, most
convenient, and in other ways a better
way to use these substances

35. Hypodermic syringe

36. • Back to anesthesia: So now we have two
types of anesthesia, inhalation of certain
gases and hypodermic. A third route,
intravenous, came with the continuing
development of better needles, finer and
more flexible, less likely to break off— and
also the invention of the chemical,
barbituate, and its derivatives.

37. • This is 21st
century and science has given
so much to people to enjoy & remorse.
But back in those days before industrial
revolution people had to struggle for
surgery and pain. They were rather afraid
of it. At any rate, regardless of who
discovered anesthesia it was indeed a true
breakthrough.

39. Summary

40. References
• 1. Kuntz, L; Vera, A (2005). "Transfer pricing in hospitals and
efficiency of physicians: the case of anesthesia services". Health
Care Management Review. 30 (3): 262–69.
doi:10.1097/0000401020050700000010. PMID 16093892.
• 2. Small, MR (1962). Oliver Wendell Holmes. New York: Twayne
Publishers. p. 55. ISBN 9780808402374. OCLC 273508. "In a letter
to dentist William T. G. Morton, Holmes wrote: "Everybody wants to
have hand in a great discovery. All I will do is to give a hint or two as
to names—or the name—to be applied to the state produced and
the agent. The state should, I think, be called 'Anaesthesia.' This
signifies insensibility—more particularly ... to objects of touch.""
• 3. Powell MA (1996). "9: Wine and the vine in ancient Mesopotamia:
the cuneiform evidence". In McGovern PE, Fleming SJ, Katz SH.
The origins and ancient history of wine (Food and nutrition in history
and anthropology). 11 (1 ed.). Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach
Publishers. pp. 96–124. ISBN 9789056995522. ISSN 02755769.
Retrieved 20100915.

41. 4. Evans, TC (1928). "The opium question, with special reference to Persia (book
review)". Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 21 (4)
339–340. doi:10.1016/S00359203( 28)900310. Retrieved 20100918. "The earliest
known mention of the poppy is in the language of the Sumerians, a nonSemitic
people who descended from the uplands of Central Asia into Southern
Mesopotamia....“
5. Booth M (1996). "The discovery of dreams". Opium: A History. London: Simon &
Schuster, Ltd. p. 15. ISBN 0312206674. Retrieved 20100918.
6. Krikorian, AD (1975). "Were the opium poppy and opium known in the ancient
Near East?". Journal of the
History of Biology. 8 (1): 95–114.doi:10.1007/BF00129597. PMID 11609871.

42. THANK YOU 