'Anatomy' is a gothic love story stirring up mystery and medicine
In Dana Schwartz's novel, it's 1817 and Lady Hazel, set to marry a cousin, just wants to study medicine. She meets a boy who helps her — and the journey is an adventure from there.
If you've ever had an operation, it's highly likely an anesthetic was in use, whether local or general. Imagine, for a moment, what that operation would have been like without it. Horrible, right?
In Western medicine, at least, chemical compounds like chloroform and ether were first used as anesthetic in the 1840s, according to , and before that, "surgical operations were conducted with little or no pain relief and were attended with great suffering and emotional distress." Among the various men who pioneered different methods is one Sir James Young Simpson, 1st Baronet,
