Being a brief but discursive history of some of the developments in general anaesthesia up to the twentieth century, mostly in Europe.

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“What An Infinite Blessing!”¹

Being a brief but discursive history of some of the developments in general anaesthesia up to the twentieth century, mostly in Europe. And for reasons of length, this survey will limit itself to general, excluding local and regional, anaesthesia, and will stop at about 1900. 

Limited references will be made to non-European traditions, limited because the author is unable to double-check statements made about early developments in Asian and native American languages due to lack of knowledge of those languages. As we will see, it is always advisable to check such claims against original source. 

In 1846 Charlotte Brontë's father, Patrick, underwent a cataract operation at the age of seventy without any anaesthetic, sedation, or analgesic whatever. I can't even imagine what that must have been like, but Patrick, who according to the surgeons showed "extraordinary patience and firmness", left his own account of the procedure: 

"Belladonna a virulent poison - was first applied, twice, in order to expand the pupil - this occasioned very acute pains for only about five seconds - The feeling, under the operation - which lasted fifteen minutes, was of a burning nature - but not intolerable - as I have read is generally the case, in surgical operations.....”

We do not know precisely how previous generations defined and regarded pain; even nowadays, there has never yet been a published definition of pain that has survived longer than someone's leaping into print to pick holes and explain how inadequate it is, so I'm not getting into that. It's a social, cultural, generational, philosophical, physiological, psychological, scientific minefield. All we can say with reasonable certainty is, that nowadays, in the developed West, we assume that control of noxious symptoms is a given, will be a priority in the treatments given to us by nurses, physicians and surgeons. And also that the definition of what is painful (as opposed to just unpleasant) seems to have been greatly extended, notably during the twentieth century, almost in parallel as pain control mechanisms developed.