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Anesthesia was in its infancy when the American Civil War began in 1861. The sheer number of casualties gave surgeons on both sides the opportunity to gain experience with the first two anesthetic ...

Editor's Note: Shauna Devine, Ph.D., is a historian of Civil War and American medicine. She has a Ph.D. in medical history and currently holds a joint appointment as a research fellow at the Schulich ...

The use of the anesthetic agents ether and chloroform was first described in the 1840s by American physicians Crawford Long, William Morton, William Edward Clarke and James Simpson, but anesthesia was ...

The tipping point for anesthesia came on 16 th October 1846, when William T.G. Morton demonstrated the removal of a jaw tumour painlessly with the patient being anaesthetized with 'Ether'. Following ...

“Soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure.” That was Queen Victoria’s description of chloroform, the anesthetic administered by her physician John Snow to ease labour pains as she gave birth ...

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One of the greatest benefits that scientists have wrested from nature for the benefit of humankind is anesthesia to take away the pain of surgery and tooth extraction. Julie M. Fenster, a columnist ...