Contribution to the techonlogical conjectures game:
Anaesthesia: We could have had it literally two thousand years before we did.
It was worthwhile to look up arguments made in favor of surgical, labor, and other categories of pain made before its’ widespread use in the 20th century. We have modern surgery and the associated decline in mortality and morbidity because of the germ theory of disease (which brought us sterilization), penicillin, anaesthesia, and to a less extent, power tools. Anaesthesia only entered the popular consciousness because an American dentist decided ‘pain free dentistry’ might be an effective marketing ploy, and was not accepted in that dentist’s lifetime.
Interestingly enough, some of the surgical papers proposing many medical procedures that are now common include something to the effect of “we weren’t sure how to proceed so we went to the local hardware store and...”
My takeaway from reading up on the case for pain was as follows: if “something something self-discipline” is the best argument in favor of something, it’s a problem waiting to be solved.
Contribution to the techonlogical conjectures game:
Anaesthesia: We could have had it literally two thousand years before we did.
It was worthwhile to look up arguments made in favor of surgical, labor, and other categories of pain made before its’ widespread use in the 20th century. We have modern surgery and the associated decline in mortality and morbidity because of the germ theory of disease (which brought us sterilization), penicillin, anaesthesia, and to a less extent, power tools. Anaesthesia only entered the popular consciousness because an American dentist decided ‘pain free dentistry’ might be an effective marketing ploy, and was not accepted in that dentist’s lifetime.
Interestingly enough, some of the surgical papers proposing many medical procedures that are now common include something to the effect of “we weren’t sure how to proceed so we went to the local hardware store and...”
My takeaway from reading up on the case for pain was as follows: if “something something self-discipline” is the best argument in favor of something, it’s a problem waiting to be solved.