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Under the Ether: Anesthesia Through the Centuries Part 2

·1 hr 3 min·4 clips

Karl Kahler watched cocaine numb a tongue and then confirmed that the eye could become completely insensitive to pain.

1. Sink or Swim Podcast part two follows anesthesia history after Ether Day in 1846 and shifts from ether to chloroform. 2. Sheena is the host, a fourth year medical student at NSUMD, and she frames the episode as a continuation of the earlier History of Anesthesia story. 3. The episode asks how anesthesia moved from improvised chemicals to measured technique, safer delivery, and a medical specialty. 4. James Simpson, a Scottish obstetrician, tried to find something less pungent than ether for his patients and found chloroform during a late-night gathering. 5. Simpson and his medical colleagues sniffed chemicals until everyone passed out, and Simpson called chloroform “definitely stronger than ether.” 6. Chloroform spread quickly in Paris, Scotland, and London after 1846, then became the anesthetic of choice in France by the end of 1847 despite reported fatalities. 7. The episode says chloroform later replaced ether in countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. 8. Queen Victoria’s use of chloroform during childbirth in 1853 helped make it socially and medically prominent in Europe. 9. John Snow appears as the European counterpart to Morton, and the episode links him to anesthesia science and to the 1854 cholera epidemic in London. 10. Snow’s five degrees of anesthesia range from hazy euphoria to overdose, with the second degree as the surgical sweet spot and the fifth degree as respiratory paralysis. 11. Snow and Simpson disagree on whether anesthesia should be governed by measurements or by practical handkerchief dosing. 12. Snow later concluded that chloroform could be deadly because too much could cause heart paralysis, especially in older patients. 13. Edward Embly at the University of Melbourne extended Snow’s work by tying anesthesia deaths to blood flow, cardiac syncope, and circulatory collapse. 14. The episode says chloroform eventually faded from operating rooms by the early 20th century because of its unpredictability. 15. Karl Kahler’s work at Vienna General Hospital showed that cocaine could numb the tongue, the cornea, and eventually the eye for local anesthesia. 16. Joseph Brettauer carried Kahler’s paper to the Heidelberg Ophthalmological Society in September 1884 when Kahler could not afford the trip, and the paper was well received. 17. The episode traces later local anesthetics from benzocaine in 1890 to procaine, sold as Novocaine, in 1904. 18. Spinal anesthesia begins with J. Leonard Corning’s accidental block in 1885, then August Beer’s 1897 spinal block, and A.E. Barker’s 1907 density-based solution for controlling spread. 19. The tone is explanatory and chronological, with Sheena adding humor, side comments, and repeated comparisons like tricycles, Formula One, and “magic handkerchiefs.” 20. Listeners interested in medical history, surgery, or anesthesia technique will get the most from this episode; listeners wanting a short story without dense chronology may skip it.

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