On October 16, 1846, Dr. William Thomas Morton demonstrated the successful use of anesthesia to a group of physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital. For the first time, patients could find relief from the horrible pain of surgical operations. At first, ether was the anesthesia doctors recommended most, but soon chloroform was the drug of choice. Most men wounded during the Civil War never had access to anesthesia. Yet pain was often the least of a wounded man's problems. Scientists had not yet discovered the existence of infectious microbes or the importance of sanitation. Many wounded men lived through surgery only to die of infection. |
