Anesthesia

I will be telling you my short little paper on the

History of Anesthesia. I will be telling what some

terms mean that will be used in anesthesia history.

Also I will be telling a some dates from years before

our time on how anesthesia came from and who was

there, and what drugs came out.

First I will be starting out with several definition

of the term anesthesia. The absence of normal

sensitiation, especially to pain, as induced by an

anesthetic substance or by hypnosis or as occurs with

traumatic or pathophysiologic damage to nerve tissue.

Anesthesia induced for medical or surgical purposes

may be topical, local, regional, or general and is

named for the anesthetic agent used, the method of the

procedure followed, or the area or organ anesthetized.

The people who are permitted to give anesthesia to a

patient is an anesthesiologist or a Certified

Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA). (Mosby's Pocket

Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health)

There is also two different ways of describing

Anesthesia you could either call it anesthesia or

analgesic.

In the next couple paragraphs I will be going over

ways on how anesthesia would be given to a patient who

will be going under a surgery.

General anesthesia is the most common way that

anesthesia is given to a patient. The absence of

sensation and consciousness as induced by various

anesthetic agents, given by inhalation or intravenous

injection. Most of the time a general anesthesia is

given to the patient through an IV to the patient.

Local anesthesia is another common way of inducing a

patient. The administration of a local anesthetic

agent into tissues to induce the absence of sensation

in a small area of the body. Topical anesthesia is a

surface analgesia produced by application of a topical

anesthetic in the form of a solution, gel, or ointment

to the skin, mucous membrane, or cornea. Regional

anesthesia is an anesthesia of an area of the body by

injecting a local anesthetic to block a group of

sensory nerve fibers. Next one would be a caudal

anesthesia which would an injection of an agent into

the caudal part of the epidural space through the

sacral hiatus to anesthetize sacral and lower lumbar

nerve roots.

An epidural anesthesia is an injection A type of

regional

block in which a local anesthetic is injected into the

epidural space surrounding the dural membrane, which

contains cerebrospinal fluid and spinal nerves. The

last most common way of getting an anesthesia adjant

is inhalation. In halation is a surgical narcosis

achieved by the inhalation of an anesthetic gas or a

vapor.

The word anesthesia comes from a "Every body wants to

have a hand in a great discovery. All I will do is to

give you a hint or two as to names--or the name---to

be applied to the state produced and the agent. The

state should, I think, be called Ð''Anaesthesia' (from

the Greek word anaisthesia, Ð''lack of sensation'). This

signifies insensibility ... The adjective will be

Ð''Anaesthetic'. Thus we might say the state of

Anaesthesia, or the anaesthetic state" (The American

Dictionary of English Words).

The best way for me to tell you about how anesthesia

came along I will tell you in a better way. The

history of anesthesia is pretty long. Alcohol, herbs,

hypnosis, acupuncture, and "the bullet" had been

around for centuries before the "discovery" of

anesthesia. Diethyl ether also had been around for a

while before its first documented use for anesthesia

in 1842 by Crawford Long, a rural physician in

Georgia. He removed some small masses in the neck of a

patient after administering ether via a towel. The fee

for this first surgical anesthetic was $2.25,

including the ether, amazingly close to today's rates!

Unfortunately, he didn't get around to reporting his

experience until 1849. By that time the well known

public demonstration by William Morton at MGH had

already taken place already. Psychopharmacology,