The Chemical History of Anaesthesia

Introduction: The Age of Agony The accounts and recollections of surgery before the discovery of anaesthesia are gruesome and it is difficult to imagine what such surgery was truly like. One of the best descriptions of a pre-anaesthesia medical procedure was provided by Fanny Burney, an English author, in a letter to her sister describing her mastectomy: When the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast cutting through veins arteries flesh nerves I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision and I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still! so excruciating was the agony.1