1 00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:03,480 Speaker 1: All right, have you ever had surgery? Stitches, broken bone, 2 00:00:03,560 --> 00:00:06,720 Speaker 1: or even a tooth pull? Human beings have been dealing 3 00:00:06,760 --> 00:00:10,840 Speaker 1: with those kinds of painful traumas for thousands of years now. 4 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:13,040 Speaker 1: Try to imagine what any of that would have been 5 00:00:13,280 --> 00:00:17,919 Speaker 1: like before anesthesia. I'm Patty Steele, when surgery involved a 6 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:21,279 Speaker 1: room full of dressers, a lot of speed cutting, and 7 00:00:21,360 --> 00:00:24,800 Speaker 1: pretty much no pain relief. That's next on the backstory. 8 00:00:24,920 --> 00:00:32,640 Speaker 1: The backstory is back. The first known surgery was actually 9 00:00:32,760 --> 00:00:36,680 Speaker 1: a leg amputation thirty one thousand years ago on a 10 00:00:36,720 --> 00:00:40,080 Speaker 1: little boy on the island of Borneo. There were primitive 11 00:00:40,159 --> 00:00:43,400 Speaker 1: brain surgeries eight thousand years ago, and then in the 12 00:00:43,440 --> 00:00:47,120 Speaker 1: past four thousand years everything from c section berths to 13 00:00:47,200 --> 00:00:50,360 Speaker 1: plastic surgery. A little over two hundred years ago, the 14 00:00:50,400 --> 00:00:56,720 Speaker 1: first successful hysterectomies took place. All of that without anesthesia. Now, honestly, 15 00:00:56,760 --> 00:00:59,520 Speaker 1: it wasn't until the nineteen hundreds that you were more 16 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:02,840 Speaker 1: likely to survive surgery than to die during it, or 17 00:01:02,880 --> 00:01:06,480 Speaker 1: worse yet, die because of it. So what about the pain? 18 00:01:07,040 --> 00:01:10,000 Speaker 1: The first actual anesthetic only arrived about one hundred and 19 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:13,560 Speaker 1: eighty years ago. It was ether, and it offered reliable, 20 00:01:13,640 --> 00:01:16,800 Speaker 1: pain free surgery for the first time in human history. 21 00:01:17,360 --> 00:01:20,960 Speaker 1: But all those treatments and surgeries that came before had 22 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:24,400 Speaker 1: to happen for the most part, without anything to relieve 23 00:01:24,480 --> 00:01:27,440 Speaker 1: the pain except maybe a bit of liquor. And how 24 00:01:27,480 --> 00:01:30,440 Speaker 1: did that go? Well? Some cultures did have a few 25 00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:34,520 Speaker 1: recipes for pain relief. Six thousand years ago, the Sumerians 26 00:01:34,600 --> 00:01:37,360 Speaker 1: used the opium poppy, which of course is how morphine 27 00:01:37,440 --> 00:01:41,080 Speaker 1: is made. And two thousand years ago an iconic Chinese 28 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:45,160 Speaker 1: doctor Hua Too mixed up and anesthetic for his patients 29 00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:49,400 Speaker 1: that may have included cannabis, wine, and wolf spain, which 30 00:01:49,440 --> 00:01:53,280 Speaker 1: has a really powerful but sometimes deadly neurotoxin in it. 31 00:01:53,440 --> 00:01:57,160 Speaker 1: Then about twelve hundred years ago in Persia, doctors developed 32 00:01:57,200 --> 00:02:00,600 Speaker 1: what they called a soporific sponge the name of the 33 00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:03,600 Speaker 1: what was it? It was a bundle of rags that 34 00:02:03,640 --> 00:02:07,160 Speaker 1: were soaked in a cocktail of man drake, hen bane 35 00:02:07,160 --> 00:02:11,200 Speaker 1: and wine, oh also more opium. They'd hold the bundle 36 00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:14,480 Speaker 1: under the patient's nose until they induced what they called 37 00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:18,960 Speaker 1: the great rest. But Eastern medicine, like those examples, was 38 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:22,360 Speaker 1: way more advanced than Western medicine in Europe when it 39 00:02:22,360 --> 00:02:25,079 Speaker 1: came to pain relief. You got to grit your teeth 40 00:02:25,120 --> 00:02:29,280 Speaker 1: for these stories. In eighteen eleven, an English novelist named 41 00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:32,720 Speaker 1: Francis Burney was living in France. She was fifty nine 42 00:02:32,800 --> 00:02:35,800 Speaker 1: years old when her doctors told her she had breast cancer. 43 00:02:36,280 --> 00:02:38,760 Speaker 1: The only way she would survive, they told her, was 44 00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:42,959 Speaker 1: with a mastectomy. There was no surgical anthesia at that point, 45 00:02:43,040 --> 00:02:46,160 Speaker 1: and she dreaded the idea, but she said later it 46 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:49,160 Speaker 1: was the only choice. Plenty of women had gone through it, 47 00:02:49,280 --> 00:02:52,799 Speaker 1: so she agreed. Now it's the morning of her surgery, 48 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:57,760 Speaker 1: September thirtieth, eighteen eleven. The men in black, three doctors 49 00:02:57,800 --> 00:03:01,560 Speaker 1: and three dressers as the assistants were arrived at her home. 50 00:03:02,200 --> 00:03:05,959 Speaker 1: Francis is blindfolded and she lies on a bed. Then 51 00:03:06,160 --> 00:03:10,480 Speaker 1: the dressers do their job. They have to physically restrain Francis, 52 00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:14,359 Speaker 1: holding her down while the surgeon works as quickly as possible. 53 00:03:15,040 --> 00:03:18,200 Speaker 1: Francis later said the pain was so intense she lost 54 00:03:18,240 --> 00:03:21,520 Speaker 1: consciousness twice, which did give her a little bit of relief. 55 00:03:22,080 --> 00:03:24,800 Speaker 1: She wrote a graphic description of when she went through 56 00:03:24,840 --> 00:03:27,640 Speaker 1: to her sister. I won't share that because it gets 57 00:03:27,680 --> 00:03:32,560 Speaker 1: pretty wild, but amazingly the operation was a success. Francis 58 00:03:32,560 --> 00:03:36,440 Speaker 1: Burney recovered and lived almost another twenty nine years, dying 59 00:03:36,480 --> 00:03:40,360 Speaker 1: at the age of eighty seven. Pretty amazing, although they 60 00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:43,560 Speaker 1: don't really know for sure. She actually had breast cancer. 61 00:03:43,920 --> 00:03:47,520 Speaker 1: That's what they suspected because of the lumps. For surgeons 62 00:03:47,600 --> 00:03:52,360 Speaker 1: operating without anesthesia, speed was everything. The longer a patient 63 00:03:52,480 --> 00:03:55,200 Speaker 1: was on the operating table, the greater the chance they 64 00:03:55,240 --> 00:03:59,520 Speaker 1: would die from either blood loss or shock. Amputations were 65 00:03:59,560 --> 00:04:03,040 Speaker 1: the true test of any great surgeon. They were celebrated 66 00:04:03,040 --> 00:04:05,840 Speaker 1: for their speed, because the quicker the surgery, the better 67 00:04:05,920 --> 00:04:09,920 Speaker 1: the survival odds. By the nineteenth century, doctors knew they 68 00:04:10,040 --> 00:04:12,880 Speaker 1: had to perform an amputation of an arm or a 69 00:04:12,960 --> 00:04:16,599 Speaker 1: leg within twenty five seconds to best keep the patient alive. 70 00:04:17,240 --> 00:04:20,719 Speaker 1: Imagine losing a limb in under thirty seconds, but the 71 00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:24,400 Speaker 1: doctor's reputation hung on it. In the eighteen forties, the 72 00:04:24,400 --> 00:04:28,880 Speaker 1: famous British surgeon Robert Liston would race into his operating 73 00:04:28,960 --> 00:04:31,919 Speaker 1: room in London and shout, time me, gentlemen, time me. 74 00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:34,760 Speaker 1: He would cut open a patient's leg with a straight 75 00:04:34,839 --> 00:04:38,320 Speaker 1: knife and saw straight through the bone in twenty five seconds. 76 00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:41,560 Speaker 1: Onlooker said that to save time, he held the bloody 77 00:04:41,640 --> 00:04:45,240 Speaker 1: knife in his teeth yikes. Stat show that five out 78 00:04:45,240 --> 00:04:48,840 Speaker 1: of six of Liston's amputees survived, but being one of 79 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:52,240 Speaker 1: his dressers was not an easy job. During one amputation, 80 00:04:52,760 --> 00:04:56,280 Speaker 1: doctor Liston worked so quickly he accidentally cut off the 81 00:04:56,320 --> 00:04:58,960 Speaker 1: fingers of one of the dressers holding the patient down 82 00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:03,320 Speaker 1: a Both the patient and the dresser died from infections, 83 00:05:03,600 --> 00:05:07,360 Speaker 1: and a third person just watching the operation actually died 84 00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:12,279 Speaker 1: of shock. Other doctors used hypnotism, coca leaves, and the 85 00:05:12,279 --> 00:05:16,080 Speaker 1: aforementioned booze, but medical historians say one of the most 86 00:05:16,120 --> 00:05:19,960 Speaker 1: important moments in human history was the development of pain 87 00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:23,839 Speaker 1: relief in the mid nineteenth century, though sadly not really 88 00:05:23,880 --> 00:05:27,719 Speaker 1: in time for battledfield surgeries during the Civil War. But 89 00:05:27,800 --> 00:05:31,280 Speaker 1: when the super fast London surgeon, doctor Liston, first got 90 00:05:31,279 --> 00:05:34,960 Speaker 1: some ether in December of eighteen forty six, he used 91 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:38,680 Speaker 1: it to sedate a patient undergoing a leg amputation. When 92 00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:42,120 Speaker 1: the patient woke up after the operation, he looked at 93 00:05:42,160 --> 00:05:45,000 Speaker 1: doctor Liston and said, when are you going to begin? 94 00:05:46,200 --> 00:05:49,120 Speaker 1: Hope you like the backstory with Patty Steele, Please leave 95 00:05:49,160 --> 00:05:51,320 Speaker 1: a review. I would love it if you'd subscribe or 96 00:05:51,400 --> 00:05:55,360 Speaker 1: follow for free to get new episodes delivered automatically and 97 00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:57,120 Speaker 1: feel free to dm me if you have a story 98 00:05:57,120 --> 00:05:59,880 Speaker 1: you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele 99 00:06:00,160 --> 00:06:10,599 Speaker 1: and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The 100 00:06:10,640 --> 00:06:15,520 Speaker 1: Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, 101 00:06:15,600 --> 00:06:19,400 Speaker 1: and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our 102 00:06:19,400 --> 00:06:23,560 Speaker 1: writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. 103 00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:26,159 Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me with comments and 104 00:06:26,200 --> 00:06:30,160 Speaker 1: even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and 105 00:06:30,200 --> 00:06:33,200 Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the 106 00:06:33,240 --> 00:06:37,000 Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't 107 00:06:37,080 --> 00:06:38,159 Speaker 1: know you needed to know.