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In the 1840s ether and then chloroform made it possible to put patients into a deep, painless sleep for surgery. Operations no longer had to be as quick as possible, and surgeons could attempt longer, more careful work.

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Before anaesthesia, surgery was a last resort, and surgeons prized speed to limit pain and blood loss. The American doctor Crawford Long used ether in Georgia in 1842 but did not publish his results until 1849. The turning point came on 16 October 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, when the dentist William Morton gave ether to a patient, Edward Gilbert Abbott, while the surgeon John Collins Warren removed a tumour from his neck. By December surgeons in London were using it too. In 1847 the Edinburgh obstetrician James Young Simpson introduced chloroform, and in 1853 Queen Victoria was given it during the birth of her eighth child. Anaesthesia alone did not make surgery safe: infection still killed many patients until Joseph Lister began cleaning wounds and instruments with carbolic acid, a germ-killing chemical, in the 1860s, the start of antiseptic surgery.

Türkçe oku
Eterle, ardından kloroformla yapılan anestezi, 1840'larda hastaları ameliyat boyunca acı duymadan derin bir uykuda tutmayı mümkün kıldı. Artık ameliyatı olabildiğince çabuk bitirmek gerekmiyordu; cerrahlar daha uzun ve özenli ameliyatlara girişebildi.

Anesteziden önce ameliyat son çareydi; cerrahlar acıyı ve kan kaybını azaltmak için her şeyden çok hıza önem verirdi. ABD'li hekim Crawford Long 1842'de Georgia'da eter kullandı, ama sonuçlarını 1849'a kadar yayımlamadı. Dönüm noktası 16 Ekim 1846'da Boston'daki Massachusetts Genel Hastanesi'nde yaşandı: Diş hekimi William Morton, Edward Gilbert Abbott adlı hastaya eter verdi, cerrah John Collins Warren da hastanın boynundaki tümörü aldı. Aralık ayında Londra'daki cerrahlar da eteri kullanıyordu. 1847'de Edinburgh'da çalışan kadın doğum uzmanı James Young Simpson kloroformu kullanmaya başladı; Kraliçe Victoria'ya da 1853'te sekizinci çocuğunu doğururken kloroform verildi. Yine de anestezi tek başına ameliyatı güvenli kılmadı. Joseph Lister 1860'larda yaraları ve aletleri mikrop öldürücü karbolik asitle temizlemeye başlayıp antiseptik cerrahinin temelini atana kadar, enfeksiyon pek çok hastanın ölümüne yol açtı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: History of general anesthesia
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