Anesthetics have been around for over a hundred years. The first ever recorded use of an anesthetic was during the time of the Incas. Shamans drilled holes in the heads of their patients while holding chewed up cocoa leaves over the patient’s mouth and nose. This ritual was believed to set free your bad spirits through the holes and the cocoa leaves provided you comfort while returning back to your good self. However, anesthetics were not commonly used after their fall until about the late 1700s to modern times.
Prior to the 1840s, anesthesia was not used at all on patients by doctors and dentists. During this time period, if you required an amputation or some other kind of surgery it was absolutely necessary to save your life. In 1846, a dentist publicly demonstrated that ether would put his patients to sleep. This spread around and eventually ether became the revival of anesthesiology. Now, all those facts are interesting and good to know if you’re learning about anesthetics. However, let’s say you’re in medical school. What exactly is considered an anesthetic?
An anesthetic is any substance that will reduce sensitivity to the amount of pain you endure. So it doesn’t just have to be laughing gas at the dentist or ether at the doctor for an amputation. Advil is an anesthetic for aches and soreness. Warm water can be used as an anesthetic. Itching powder can be used to reduce irritation of the skin. There are anesthetics all around us, some of which you probably didn’t know were. The next question you may have is how something is classified as an anesthetic. The answer is quite simple.
As long as it reduces the amount of pain that you feel, it’s classified as an anesthetic. It doesn’t not matter how it is used. It can be inhaled, injected, or even taken orally. They can be soft and smooth, large pills, and even a liquid. However, you must always remain aware of the amount of the anesthetic that you are using. If it’s pain medication and in the pill form, ask your doctor how many milligrams of whatever pain reliever you’re using that you need to have. If you are giving a patient anesthetic, ensure your patient you have the training for it, extra personnel, and accreditation.
This will let them know that in case something goes wrong you can handle the situation adequately. This brings me to next area I wish to talk about, anesthetic safety. In order to ensure your safety and your patient’s safety, you need to follow a few guidelines. Anesthesia is a medical practice, therefore you need to be trained and accredited. Always have a trained assistant with you while performing an anesthetic on a patient. Always double check the amount of the anesthetic you are giving and/or prescribing a patient to avoid a mix up.
Ask for any allergies a person may have to avoid serious injury or death before applying an anesthetic. Clean all utensils you may require before and after you use them. Be aware and cautious of all possible side effects and make your patient aware of them also. Now that you know all about anesthetics, you may want to know who used them besides Incan shamans and doctors from the 1800s. During the Civil War, many soldiers had to have amputations. They were typically on their legs. Field surgeons and nurses had to come up with a way to reduce the pain the soldiers felt.
They started following the idea of ether on both the Confederate side and the Union side. During World War II, intense wartime training was made out to everyone, especially the Germans, British, and eventually the Americans. This training simulated extreme life-like situations. After the soldiers went through their training, doctors and surgeons would rush in and give medical attention to any wounded. If they needed to perform an immediate amputation, they would apply an anesthetic to the soldier and perform the amputation right there.
They would lay out a small tarp to prevent dirt from getting inside you and to help keep bacteria out of your amputated body part. Unfortunately, not all victims of the war received anesthetics. The Holocaust, a different battle not fought on a battlefield, showed no mercy to its victims. The Nazis didn’t give any anesthetics to those that perished and endured the hardships of the concentration camps. That’s really all there is to know! You’ve learned a lot about anesthetics. You learned what an anesthetic exactly is.
You identified some different examples of an anesthetic. Also, you learned the very simple classification of an anesthetic and safety guidelines when in use of anesthetic products. Finally, you learned of some very important time periods where anesthetics were first introduced and how they carried on into modern day history. I hope you found this very informative! Mnwelldir. org. 2004. December 11th, ScienceEducation> Dictionary. com. December 11th. Anaesthesiologists. org. December 11th. < www. anesthesiologists. org/guidelines> History. amedd. army. December 11th.