Tag: anesthetics
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Hanaoka Seishū, inventor of an early general anesthetic
Kingston Bridges London, United Kingdom Hanaoka performing the first operation with tsūsensan. University Hospital Medical Information Network Center. Since time immemorial, humans have sought to alleviate illness and suffering through surgical interventions. Amputations with improvised tools took place in the Upper Paleolithic period over 30,000 years ago, and skeletal evidence of trephining has been…
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William Webster, the first modern Canadian academic anesthesiologist
Kush Patel Ajax, Canada Dr. William Webster. Photo by the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (CAS), 2004. Archival Resources, Preserving the Heritage of Canadian Anesthesiology, p. 5. Permission obtained by the CAS Archives and Artifacts Committee. Until the early twentieth century, anesthetics were a black box, and even though ether and chloroform were commonly used, their…
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George Crile Sr., founder of the Cleveland Clinic
Portrait of G. W. Crile. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) Early days George Crile was an exceptional man, a skilled surgeon who lived at a time when American medicine was emerging from its horse and buggy period and was embracing the principles of aseptic surgery and scientific medicine. Always full of new ideas, he was…