Surgery in a Time Before Anesthesia

[Sanguine]

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of the new novel "Dr. Mutter's Marvels," released today. She contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter was a pre-Civil War plastic surgeon who performed radical surgery on the severely deformed in a time before anesthesia. During his life and career, the American medical community saw enormous leaps forward when it came to innovations and discoveries — but in writing a nonfiction book about Mütter's work, I was amazed at how his story, and the parallel story of the development of anesthetics, illustrates the sometimes chaotic and furious path of scientific discovery. ['Dr. Mütter's Marvels' (US 2014): Book Excerpt ]



I had always assumed that medical science — so rooted in provable facts — would embody that clean upward line of success. But science, like life, is far more complicated...

http://m.livescience.com/48003-anesthesia-was-once-devils-work.html

Fascinating stuff!