You’re lying on the operating bed, waking up from a sweet dream, feeling relieved that the surgery is over.
The next second, however, a sharp object is placed against your abdomen and an incision is made.
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
The excruciating pain hits, the blood gushing out, and a pair of hands grips your guts.
You want to run away, but you can’t feel your limbs, you can’t even move a finger; you try to open your eyes, but your eyelids are heavy; you shout with all your strength, The vocal cords seemed to be stuck, unable to make any sound.
Fear consumes you, but unfortunately, no one finds you awake.
This kind of pain that life is worse than death is a “near-death experience” when the anesthesia fails during surgery.
The purpose of anesthesia is to reduce the pain of the patient during surgery.
However, general anesthesia was not invented until the mid-19th century. In the age of underdeveloped anesthesia, performing a surgical operation was equivalent to accepting torture in a sober state.
How did humans operate? Raw planing?
In seventeenth century Europe, wars were frequent, medical equipment was scarce, and most surgical operations were simple and crude. Doctors often used some quick-acting “anesthesia” methods, such as stick anesthesia.
No one can’t be put down by a sap, if there is, then another one.
The emergence of stick hemp has greatly solved the problem of difficult treatment, because most of the patients were knocked into mental retardation, and a small number of people died without surgery.
There are also less violent ones, such as bloodletting anesthesia, where the patient is bled until he is in a coma and shock; or the limbs are tied and the nerves are compressed to numb the limbs.
All in all, these physical anesthesia methods keep the patient jumping back and forth between pain relief and heaven.
If you traveled back 300 years and had an amputation, you might have experienced something like this—
First, two doctors grabbed your limbs and pressed you onto a blood-stained bed. A stick from nowhere smashed your head hard, and you briefly passed out.
Then the operation begins, a sharp knife is plunged into your injured leg, and the skin and muscle are ripped open.
After the bones were exposed, the doctor took out another saw and started to output frantically, like sawing wood.
When the bone is cut, it is time to stop the bleeding. The doctor pulled the flesh back to its original position, picked up the iron and scalded it, um, it smelled of meat.
The surgery is over, and if you’re lucky enough to be alive, that’s a big deal. After all, surgery at that time had a mortality rate as high as 60%.
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
And because the anesthesia is ineffective, the patient may pass out in excruciating pain and wake up in excruciating pain.
In order to relieve the pain of the patient, the first principle of the doctor’s operation is: fast!
For example, Russian doctor Pirogov can saw off his thigh in 3 minutes;
French doctor Larrey has set a record of performing more than 200 amputations in 24 hours.
In the hands of many sharp knives, the British surgeon Liston can be described as a giftedUnload arms in seconds, saw blade legs in 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
But too fast is not a good thing. During an operation, Liston went down with a knife, the patient’s thigh came off, and the assistant’s finger came off, and the onlooker doctor was so frightened that he died suddenly on the spot. .
A few days later, the patient and assistant also died of the infection. An operation, a record 300% mortality rate.
Of course, this can’t be entirely blamed on Liston. In the age of no anesthesia, the knife is not fast, and the flesh hurts.
With no sterilization and no hemostasis, the odds of survival are lower than the odds of winning at Russian roulette.
Until October 16, 1846, the first case of ether inhalation anesthesia was successful, and modern medical anesthesia came on the stage, and the era of “Little Li Feidao” came to an end.
Today’s anaesthesia is safer and more controllable. Put on a breathing mask, or get an injection, and you’ll fall asleep and wake up safely.
However, anesthesia doesn’t just put you to sleep. In order to wake you up alive, the anesthesiologist does much more than just give an injection.
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