Annals of medical history . Volume i Winter 1917 Number 4 THE FIRST PRINTED DOCUMENTS RELATING TO MODERN SURGICAL ANESTHESIA1 By SIR WILLIAM OSLER, , F. R. S. Oxford, HE story of surgicalanaesthesia illustrateshow long it takes anidea to become effect-ive. The idea of pro-ducing insensibilityto pain during a cut-ting operation is ofgreat antiquity, e. g., in Chapter II, 21, ofthe Book of Genesis. Nor is the wordanaesthesia modern, as is sometimes said,and invented by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Itoccurs, Withington tells me, first in Plato(Timaeus) and is used by Dioscorides inthe mod
Annals of medical history . Volume i Winter 1917 Number 4 THE FIRST PRINTED DOCUMENTS RELATING TO MODERN SURGICAL ANESTHESIA1 By SIR WILLIAM OSLER, , F. R. S. Oxford, HE story of surgicalanaesthesia illustrateshow long it takes anidea to become effect-ive. The idea of pro-ducing insensibilityto pain during a cut-ting operation is ofgreat antiquity, e. g., in Chapter II, 21, ofthe Book of Genesis. Nor is the wordanaesthesia modern, as is sometimes said,and invented by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Itoccurs, Withington tells me, first in Plato(Timaeus) and is used by Dioscorides inthe modern sense. The extraordinary controversy which hasraged, and which re-rages every few years,on the question as to whom the world isindebted for the introduction of anaesthesia,illustrates the absence of true historical 1 Remarks made on presenting Mortons originalpapers to the Royal Society of Medicine, London,May 15, 1918. perspective and a failure to realize justwhat priority means in the case of a greatdiscovery. Why do we not give the credit to Dios-corides, who described both general andlocal anaesthesia, or to Pliny, or Apuleiusor to Hiotho, the Chinaman, who seemsto
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