In the olden days, surgeries and other medical treatments were conducted without administering pain killers. The patient had to suffer severe pain to get the treatment done. Surgeons and doctors worked to discover sedatives that would numb the patient’s body, so that the surgery would be painless, or rather less painful.
Two American dentists, Horace Wells and William Morton were the first to use anaesthetics. Wells made an unsuccessful attempt to use laughing gas (nitrous oxide) in 1845 in addition to trying if ether would act as a local anaesthetic. Morton tried making his patients inhale ether and successfully demonstrated anaesthetic surgery in 1846.
Next year, a Scottish surgeon James Simpson started using chloroform to help women through the pain of childbirth. He attained immense popularity after giving chloroform to Queen Victoria during the birth of Prince Leopold, her eighth child.
Much safer and effective alternatives to sulphuric ether and chloroform are available today. Mainly sevoflurane and isoflurane are used as anaesthetics. General anaesthesia is considered as one of the greatest discoveries of all time.
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