Anesthesia was my first clinical rotation in medical school and my introduction to pharmacology. One of my initial tasks was to administer a small dose of remifentanil, a fast-acting type of...
Can you imagine a tooth being extracted without an anesthetic? Or, worse, a limb being amputated? A horrific thought! Yet that was what patients had to contend with until the mid 19th century when...
Queen Victoria was the first monarch to give birth to a child under anesthesia. Prince Leopold, the Queen’s eighth child, was born in 1853 after her physician Dr. John Snow had administered...
This past week on October 16 we celebrated National Ether Day. If you missed it, here is why you should not have. Rarely does a single event alter the course of medicine, but that is exactly what...
If you’ve read the article I wrote about why patients are allowed to drink clear fluids but not eat before surgery you’ll know that I recently had surgery to repair the ACL and meniscus in my left...
A dentist named Morton claimed that he could produce surgical anesthesia with this miracle compound and that he would demonstrate it at Mass General. With the observation gallery full and the men...
A woman became allergic to her husband after twenty five years of marriage. She developed pain all over her body every time he approached her. The cause? A pain killer! The husband was a dentist...
Rarely does a single event alter the course of medicine, but that is exactly what happened at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16, 1846 in the surgical theatre that would...
In 1853 the Queen’s personal physician, Dr. John Snow dripped an ounce of chloroform on a handkerchief which was then held next to the royal mouth as Prince Leopold was delivered. Her Majesty was...
RSS