?Despite its obvious advantages, pain-free surgery, dentistry and especially pain-free childbirth were opposed by conservative minority. The city of Zurich initially outlawed anesthesia altogether. “Pain is a natural and intended curse of the primal sin. Any attempt to do away with it must be wrong”, averred the Zurich City Fathers. Their stance contrasts with the more enlightened Swiss attitude of the 1990’s. Latter-day Zurich experimented with what became known as Needle Park. Addicts could openly buy narcotics and inject heroin without police intervention.
In Scotland, Sir James Young Simpson, eloquent advocate of chloroform anesthesia and pioneer of painless delivery in childbirth, offended various Calvanist Scotts by his presumption. For didn’t Genesis 3:16 declare: “Unto the woman he said ‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and they conception; in sorrow and thou shalt bring forth children’ “? Religious traditionalists held that mothers ought to fulfill the “edict of bringing forth children in sorrow” as laid down in the Holy Bible. Simpson was accordingly denounced by a vocal minority of ministers and priests as a blaspheming heretic who uttered words put into his mouth by Satan.
One clergyman saw the new chloroform anesthesia as “a decoy from Satan, apparently offering to bless woman; but, in the end, it will harden society and rob God of the deep earnest cries, which arise in time of trouble for help. ” God’s reaction to being robbed of the cries of women in labor is not on record; but there were mutterings that infants delivered painlessly should be denied the sacrament of baptism. This never came to pass: mid-Victorian religious opposition to anesthesia was neither as widespread nor as organized as some historians were later to suggest.
Yet a hostile reaction to human tampering with the God-given order of things hadn’t always been empty rhetoric. In the text of his, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, Mr. White relates how “as far back as the year 1591, Eufame Macalyne, a lady of rank, being charged with seeking the aid of Agnes Sampson for the relief of pain at the time of the birth of her two sons, was burned alive on the castle hill of Edinburgh; and this old theological view persisted even to the middle of the 19th century. ” Fortunately, Professor Sampson knew his old Testament. He contended that
the Biblical “sorrow” was better translated as toil, an allusion to the muscular effort a woman exerted against the anatomical forces of her pelvis in expelling her child at birth. Morever, he cited Genesis 2:21 “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof… ” Casting God in the role of the Great Anesthetist might seem at variance with the historical record; and not everyone was convinced. Dr. Ashwell, author of Lancet, replied that the deep sleep of Adam took place before the introduction of pain into the world, during his state of innocence.
” Yet, the suggestion that God Himself employed anesthesia helped carry the day. A couple hundred years later, the use of anesthesia is not being questioned religiously but rather the incessant fear of not waking up keeps the conservative minority opposed just the same. Now this can be due to physical and/or psychological factors. Anesthesia does help the host cope if used correctly but, generally speaking, the submissive state the host is in while under anesthesia may feel as if they’re on a high, meaning; some users wouldn’t like the feeling and as a result, will subconsciously oppose the agent.
On the psychological side, patients are so stupefied by the thought of surgery and having a needle stuck in their arm that they don’t realize the importance of such a medicinal practice. Moreover, there’s the other factor – of control. According to Dr. Raz from the Board of Personality, he states that adults either want to be controlled or in control of theirs – known as the Dominance factor. With that said, patients who prefer to be in control generally have problems when under the decapitating power of the anesthetic drug. No matter how long the anesthesiologist tries to assuage his patients, their first instincts usually stick.
But despite it all, patients all over the world can now trust the practice of Anesthesia. Going back in the past for the last time, the practice of Anesthesia during childbirth won greater respectability following its widely-publicized use on Queen Victoria’s eighth child and youngest son, Prince Leopold, was successful; chloroform was administered by Dr. John Snow, the world’s first anesthesiologist. In 1847, Snow invented inhalers designed to deliver an accurate and controlled “dose” of anesthetizing agent to each closely monitored patient.
Prudently; in Queen Victoria;s case, the dosage of chloroform induced analgesia rather than complete anesthesia. “Dr. Snow gave the blessed chloroform and the effect was rather soothing, quitting, and delightful beyond measure,” Victoria retorted. Yes, if the queen had died in consequence, then the progress of anesthesia might have been set back a generation; fortunately, she survived unscathed. Even when technology was a bit low, anesthetics were controlled still! So, i ask the public, despite its obvious advantages, why are some still opposed to such a life-saving practice?