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AUGUSTA’S MOST SALUBRIOUS NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED IN 2006
IT’S A LONG STORY n this very day exactly 198 years ago, a baby boy was born a hundred miles up the road from Augusta. Nothing seemed particularly auspicious about this particular baby, but he would become a medical pioneer whose discovery has directly affected your life and mine. Who was this man? Well, he was born in Danielsville, Georgia, on the aforementioned November 1, 1815, if that helps. And he died at age 62 in Athens, Georgia, on June 15, 1878. Or something like that. Actually, his Athens tombstone says he was born on Nov. 1, and a larger historical graveyard marker nearby says Nov. 3. As for his date of death,
some sources say June 15, some June 16, others June 19. One thing we know for sure. He lived; he died. And in between, he became a doctor, one of tremendous importance. You’ve probably heard his name: Crawford Long. It’s a well-known name in these parts: for more than 70 years there was a Crawford W. Long Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. In 2009 that hospital was rechristened as Emory University Hospital Midtown. What did Long do to merit such an honor? He was the first physician to use inhaled ether fumes as an anesthetic during surgery. Long’s discovery arose from what we would probably call
huffing today: At the cool parties in the 1840s, huffing ether fumes was all the rage. People would stagger and reel and fall down, and were probably even sometimes arrested for RUI (Riding Under the Influence). As the well-known story goes, Long noticed people could unwittingly inflict all kinds of pain upon themselves without really feeling it. Coincidentally, an acquaintance of Long’s, one James Venable, had been putting off the excision of a tumor from his neck. Long convinced him to let him (Long) do the deed while he (Venable) was in the throes of ether inhalation. The rest, as they say, is not history. Long failed to realize the importance of what had happened, with the result that others claimed the limelight. Despite that, the verdict of history is in, and it is that Georgia’s Crawford W. Long was the first physician to make a surgical procedure a pain-free experience through the use of ether. Want to learn more? Visit crawfordlong.org for information about the Crawford Long Museum in Jefferson, Georgia. +
NOVEMBER 1, 2013
Before Long...
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t has been said that the main antidote for painful medical procedures in centuries past was very simple: ear plugs for the doctor. Although there have been extreme situations (like battlefield injuries), when it came to planned surgeries, as long as people have been performing medical procedures on each other, they’ve had something on hand to kill the pain — or at least try. The effectiveness of that “something” has varied considerably. Some people were lucky enough to get their hands on opium, cocaine, or marijuana. The Incas managed to drill holes in the heads of patients with relatively little pain by chewing coca leaves and then spitting into the wounds. Most patients, however, were not so fortunate. Deliberate drunkenness was sometimes used, but the really unlucky people had to make due with folk anesthetics like mulberry and lettuce. Imagine being told, “I’m going to have to saw off your foot - have some lettuce.” Saws used in amputations, incidentally, were no different from the rough-toothed handsaw a carpenter might use today to saw through lumber. Prior to about 1800, doctors used simple techniques to numb a limb, like compressing it to cut off blood flow and sensation, or numbing it with cold. Some preferred the direct approach and knocked people unconscious with a blow to the head. For the more delicate types, good surgeons offered unconsciousness by strangulation. That’s better than lettuce, but it’s less than ideal. Still, when faced with the prospect of unanesthetized dental surgery or being held down while a wound was cauterized by a red-hot iron, the prospect of unconsciousness from a blow to the head was welcomed. Medical care might not have been worth getting before the 1800s. Until then the most commonly used anesthetics in industrialized nations were alcohol and opium, and neither numbed completely. Opium, while a strong analgesic, had significant side effects of its own and was typically not powerful enough to completely eliminate pain; and the large doses of alcohol needed to produce stupefaction could just as easily cause nausea, vomiting and death instead of sleep. Women preparing for childbirth were routinely told to also prepare for death. In short, before Crawford Long, surgery was a last and desperate resort. Elective surgery was unheard of. Reminiscing in 1897 about pre-anesthesia surgery, one elderly physician was quoted as saying he could only compare it to the Spanish Inquisition. He recalled “yells and screams, most horrible in my memory now, [even] after an interval of so many years.” +
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