Salt Lake Telegram | 1933-02-18 | Page 6 | Daily Health Service

Daily Health Service Boon of Anethe$ia Lett Than Century Old By Daft. MOftKIS F18HBEIN Few peraoni realize that lesa than one hundred yean have passed since th boon of anesthesia was first conferred con-ferred on mankind. Before anesthesia, the operating room was a place of terror for those who had to submit t surgical operation in order that life Itaelf might be saved, and with the great difficulty of doing delicate surgical surgi-cal work under such conditions. Today anesthesia has developed to include not only the use of nitrous oxide oxygen gas, ether, and occasionally occasion-ally chloroform, but also new gases, such as ethylene. There are also new chemical substances which make the use of anesthetics safer and even more satisfactory than they were when the method was first developed. Perhaps the greatest contribution of scientific medicine to human happiness happi-ness has been the work that has been done on this subject It has become possible, through combining the use of sedative drugs and anesthetics, to bring a patient to the operating room somnolent and cabapl of remaining without sensation sensa-tion during the long period necessary for complicated operations, including, for example, those upon the brain, i Moreover, it is now possible to in ject anesthetic substances into the spine,' and thus block off sensation from portion of the body without interfering in-terfering with consciousness. It is also possible to inject various solutions ol anesthetic character around the nerves affecting certain portions of the body, and thus to block off single sections. Among the most Interesting of the developments are the use of so-called basal anesthetics which are given te produce drowsiness or sleep, thns causing the patient to be unaware of the giving of the general anesthetic and entirely without apprehension, and thus also permitting the use of much smaller amounts of ether, nitrous ni-trous oxide, or ethylene than otherwise other-wise would be required. Of particular interest is the attempt to find new methods of sedation or anesthesia that will permit something resembling painless childbirth. Unfortunately, Un-fortunately, most anesthetic substances sub-stances used in childbirth interfere also with the muscular action avece sary for a satisfactory result. For this reason, the problem has been one of the most difficult undertaken under-taken by the medical profession and ' the search for suitable methods of controlling pain of cituUbirth continues. con-tinues. i