How Anesthesia Discover

In modern days, we can not imagine a surgery without anesthesia. Do you know anesthesia? Anesthesia is loss of sensation, especially that of pain, induced by drugs, especially as a means of facilitating safe surgical procedures. In these days it’s impossible for us taking a surgery without anethesia because we would not stand the pain. Yet, we must see back through the ages when anesthesia not yet discover. Patients back then must face the pain from the surgery they take because there’s no such thing as anesthesia or anything to loss their pain, it’s like a living hell to them, and for the doctors, the patient’s scream is just the most horrible thing. Anesthesia may be not the most groundbreaking discovery compare with the others, but still, without it, we can never imagine a surgery without anesthesia.
Anesthesia discovery happened from four well known attempt, yet there’s only one man who made into Michael Hart’s “100 Most Influental Persons In History” list. The first attempt is from a medical student named William E. Clarke. In 1842, one of his friend needed a tooth extracted, on the process, Clarke appliaed ether and the tooth was painlessly removed. But then he never continued his experiment because Clarke’s preceptor said it was just the hysterical reaction to pain.
Still on 1842, another ether attempt done by Crawford Long but he never claim his discovery because he did not convince yet. Couple of years later, Horace Wells did an experiment using nitrous oxide, he found it effective on his dentist practice. Unfortunately, when he showed it to the other doctors, he met a failure.
A year and a half later, William Thomas Green Morton, a dentist and a medical student, found out that sulfuric ether could be an anesthesia agent. He attempt it first on his dog and on himself and also on his own friends. Having gained confidence from these experiments, Morton approached John Collins Warren, Harvard's professor of surgery, for the chance to anesthetize publicly a patient for an operation. Warren agreed. On 16 October 1846, Morton's great opportunity came, Morton administered what he called letheon to Gilbert Abbott for the removal of a jaw tumor. The patient was quiet during the operation, and upon awakening could not remember the procedure. Warren, the surgeon, exclaimed, "Gentlemen, this is no humbug." William T. G. Morton, is the man who made on Michael Hart’s list.
From the explanation above, we could see that anesthesia was the most basic discovery in medical world. Giving people pacefulness when they had a surgery.

Noviyani Dwi Wulandari
XII IPA 11-22