Why Life Before Anesthesia Made Doctors More Caring
In 1812, the English novelist Frances Burney described her mounting terror as she prepared to undergo a mastectomy without any anesthetic. Having two hours to wait until the dreaded event (her 'execution', as she put it), she wandered into the room where the operation was going to take place and 'recoiled'. In an effort to control her fear she 'walked backwards & forwards till I quieted all emotion, & became, by degrees, nearly stupid – torpid, without sentiment or consciousness'.
When seven men arrived, all dressed in black, and began laying down two 'old mattresses', covering them with an 'old sheet', Burney 'began to tremble violently, more with distaste & horrour of the preparations even than of the pain'. When told to mount the bed, she stood 'suspended, for a moment, [contemplating] whether I should not abruptly escape – I looked at the door, the windows – I felt desperate'.
Submission, however, was necessary. The surgeon spread a cambric handkerchief over her face and took up the knife. Burney was consumed by a 'terror that surpasses all description'. When 'the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast – cutting through veins – arteries – flesh – nerves', she wrote: 'I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incident – & I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still! so excruciating was the agony.'
A century later, physicians took a very different view of pain narratives. Writing in the 1860s, Peter Mere Latham (physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria) inverted Mandeville's comment, grumbling that 'every person's complaint is interesting to himself, he is apt to discourse about it rather too much at large, and too little to edification'. Latham lamented that 'among the upper classes of life, we are obliged to listen to the patients' tale' – presumably because their social status entitled them to opine – but he confessed that 'we generally cut [their accounts of pain] as short as possible, in order to get to our plan of investigation'...
Read the full article at Gizmodo
(http://gizmodo.com/why-life-before-anesthesia-made-doctors-more-caring-1576833546)
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