Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How anaesthetics changed the world

by Stephanie J. Snow

Pain is a universal experience.

In surgery, pain was the stimulant that preserved life in the body during the stress of an operation.

one of medicine’s central questions: what were the risks versus benefits of medical intervention?

Later generations, including ourselves, took for granted that surgery would be pain free and that doctors would use their skills and resources to palliate pain.

The establishment of anaesthesia recast understandings of pain irrevocably.