In the early 1800s, the British chemist and inventor Sir Humphry Davy experimented on nitrous oxide and wrote about its potential as an anesthetic to relieve pain during surgery. When Davy delivered nitrous oxide (which has since become known as laughing gas) to experimental subjects, one of the patients said, “I feel like the sound of a harp.”
The story of anesthesia is one full of curiosity and controversy. Long before modern medicine offered patients the gift of unconsciousness, surgery was a brutal and harrowing ordeal—conducted swiftly, often publicly, and always painfully. The pursuit of pain relief became one of humanity’s most profound medical challenges.
What were the horrors that people had to endure before anesthesia became commonplace? And how did a bunch of experiments on questionable chemicals kick-start the medical community’s pursuit for peaceful surgery? Click through this gallery to find out.