Anaesthetics Flashcards
What are the three main problems with surgery during the 19th century?
Pain
Infection
Bloodloss
What was discovered in 1799? By who?
Laughing gas (nitrous oxide) was discovered by Humphrey Davy who was a chemist but Horace Wells was the first person to put the gas into practise as he was a dentist .
What were the benefits and limitations of laughing gas?
Benefits: Dentistry was a lot easier as the gas didn’t knock people out it just numbed the area which was being operated on.
Limitations: Nobody believed Davy and Wells until he published his work. Plus, the gas didn’t work during some operations.
What was discovered in 1846? By who?
Ether was discovered by William Thomas Morton who painlessly removed a tumour from somebodies jaw after giving him ether.
Sir Robert Liston was the first British surgeon to use ether during an operation.
What were the benefits and limitations of Ether?
Benefits: The patient experiences no pain during an operation and it was more effective than laughing gas.
Limitations: Ether cause irritation to the lungs and eyes. Also, ether made people vomit and caused coughing. Ether was extremely flammable.
What was discovered in 1847? By who?
Chloroform was discovered by James Simpson who was a Professor of Midwifery at Edinburgh University. James Simpson found that chloroform was even quicker than ether and didn’t seem to have many side effects.
What were the Benefits and limitations of Chloroform?
Benefits: Chloroform knocks people out completely and helped women who were in excruciating pain during childbirth.
Limitations: People felt that using pain relief was against Gods wishes. Chloroform caused liver and heart damage.
What are the six key words of opposition against Simpson?
- God / Religion: Against gods wishes to feel natural pain.
- Infection: Because doctors had more time to complete an operation, doctors could take more risks and delve deeper into the body spreading germs.
- Death:
- Untested: People didn’t know if it was safe enough to use.
- Speed: Surgeons took pride in their speed during amputations and anaesthetics meant that speed didn’t matter any more.
- Dosage: Surgeons did not have a clue what amount to give to patients which made people skeptical to have an operation.
Who died after having an overdose of chloroform?
Hannah Greener died during an operation on her ingrowing toenail. Doctors gave Hannah some chloroform to knock her out. Hannah then gave a slight kick which the surgeons thought that she wasn’t completely knocked out so they gave her another dose of chloroform and ended up overdosing her, causing her to die.
Who was the first person to use laughing gas and what was his job?
Horace Wells- Dentist
Who solved the problem with dosage?How?
John Snow invented an inhaler which allowed the surgeons to give certain amounts of chloroform to patients.
What was the most common surgical procedure?
Amputations
who used inhaler chloroform for their birth and stop all opposition
Queen Victoria
What was surgery like before Anaesthetics were discovered?
Operations were carried out very quickly to reduce the pain
Patients were held down to reduce the amount of movement they made.
Surgeons such as Liston could remove a leg in minutes
Humphrey Davy used LAUGHING GAS to reduce pain in 1799
ETHER was also used to knock out patients but it had serious problems
What was surgery like after Anaesthetics were discovered?
The first reaction was negative – doctors were unsure about the long term effects of chloroform
The death of Hannah Greener in 1848 from too much chloroform scared surgeons
Anaesthetics did not make surgery safer – in fact the death rate got HIGHER as a result of the more complex operations that doctors started doing
However after Queen Victoria used chloroform during the delivery of her child in 1857 it became standard surgical practice
