1884, at the prime of his career in New York, Halsted read a paper describing the use of a new surgical anesthetic called cocaine. At Halle, in Volkmann’s clinic, he had watched German surgeons perform operations using this drug; it was cheap, accessible, foolproof, and easy to dose—the fast food of surgical anesthesia. His experimental curiosity aroused, Halsted began to inject himself with the drug, testing it before using it to numb patients for his ambitious surgeries. He found that it produced much more than a transitory numbness: it amplified his instinct for tirelessness; it synergized
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