Do you know that no one knows how anesthetics work?
It’s like gravity and magnetism.
All they know is - it works. But they have no idea how.
Source: good friend who is nurse anesthetist - for 30 years.....
Yes, the invention of antibiotics was huge! Before them, the average life expectancy in the US was 35 to 40. With them, it's close to 80.
Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in the past 150 years. Here’s why.
I read CENTURY OF THE SURGEON years ago. Glad I lived in the 20th Century, and now!
100 years ago I would have long been dead - a few times over.
So many in my family tree died of “acute Indigestion”.
When it hit me, it was found to be a plugged artery in the heart. Stent time!
Maybe that is why heart attacks were considered rare back in the 1800s, it masqueraded as indigestion.
What hit me when I was watching a TV show about anesthetics in the old days: A woman is about to undergo surgery and the doc says “Drink this.” She asks if it will kill the pain and he says, “No, it will help you bear the pain.” Wow.
Infection afterwards? I think that’s where “The operation was successful but the patient died.” quote came from. This was in the days when surgeons stropped their scalpels on the soles of their shoes.
Up at Ft. William Henry in NY, they had an archaeological dig of the military hospital (ca 1755). Remember the phrase “Bite the bullet.”? They really did. Among the artifacts were lead musket balls chewed flat as the poor devils underwent an operation. Talk about tough times.