From Agony to Anesthesia

The Cure for Pain: A Brief Chronology

By Shirley Fishman, Dramaturg, La Jolla Playhouse

550 B.C.E.
Sasruta, father of Indian surgery, uses herbs for pain relief. 

79 A.D.
Pliny the Elder gives wine to surgery patients “before the cutting, cauterizing, pricking or lancing of any member, to take away the sence and feeling of such extreame cures.”

1200
The soporific sponge (also known as the “sleeping sponge”), first used in Italy and Bavaria, induces sleep prior to surgery when steeped in a mixture of opium, mulberry juice, lettuce, hemlock, wine ivy. When dry, it emits a vapor inhaled by surgical patients. 

1275
Sweet vitriol, the first organic molecule of ether, is created in Spain by Dr. Raymond Lullus by pouring sulfuric acid on alcohol, which is then re-distilled.

1564
Local anesthesia is produced by compression of nerves in Italy and France.

1646
Frozen mixtures of snow and ice are used for surgical anesthesia in Italy.

1730
“Sweet vitriol” renamed “ether” (Greek for “heavenly.”)

1766
Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer develops “mesmerism,” later called hypnosis.

1771
Chemist Joseph Priestly discovers oxygen and nitrous oxide in England.

1798
Sir Humphry Davy discovers analgesic effects of nitrous oxide. It made him laugh when he inhaled it.

1799
Thomas Beddoes’ Pneumatic Institute established for the study of inhalation gases.  

Davy introduces nitrous oxide into the Institute’s medical practice.

1806
Morphine extracted from opium in Prussia.

1815
Painless operations via somnambulism conducted in Germany.

1831
Discovery of chloroform in U.S. 

1842
Crawford Williamson Long administers ether to a patient. Painlessly removes small tumors from his neck. 

1843
Injection of morphine solution in area of pain affords relief.

1844
Gardner Quincy Colton administers nitrous oxide to Horace Wells. 

1845
Horace Wells unsuccessfully demonstrates use of nitrous oxide in tooth extraction pain relief for Dr. 

John C. Warren’s class at Massachusetts General Hospital.

1846
Dr. Charles T. Jackson suggests use of pure ether to William T. G. Morton as anesthetic for his wife’s tooth pain. 

October 16, 1846
William T. G. Morton successfully demonstrates ether anesthesia in operation performed by Dr. John C. Warren at dome at Massachusetts General Hospital.   

1853
Chloroform administered to Queen Victoria during childbirth.

Invention of metallic hollow needle leads to development of the hypodermic syringe.

1860
Cocaine extracted from coca leaves.

1905
Development of novocaine.

All photos courtesy of the University of Connecticut Medical Library.