Henry Bigelow Thesis

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HENRY JACOB BIGELOW: ADVOCATE OF ANESTHESIA

Courtesy of: Today in Science History

Dying is nothing,but pain is a very serious matter.
-Henry Jacob Bigelow

THESIS
Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow advocated for the use of anesthesia. Dr. Bigelow lived in the 1800s. It was a time when people had to go through surgery awake and in pain. Dr. Bigelow changed the world by advocating the use of surgical anesthesia therefore people would not have to go through surgery being awake and in deep agony, pain, or suffering.

Courtesy of :Anesthesiology News

Background Dr. Henry J. Bigelow was born in Boston on March 11, 1818. He was the son of a doctor, Dr. Jacob Bigelow, who taught at Harvard. Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow graduated from Harvard …show more content…

Before anesthesia was discovered there was only one known "anesthetic" for cases in which surgery was attempted. Whiskey was poured down patients' throats to make them drunk. It was said that many a surgeon entered an operating room carrying two bottles of whiskey - one for the patient and the other for himself, so he can withstand the patients shrieks. whiskey was not an effective anesthetic, however, so the patient had to be strapped down to a table and held down by the surgeon's assistants. Prior to anesthesia patients had to suffer through pain during surgeries and procedures. In 1846 Dr. Bigelow was involved in the first public demonstration of anesthesia using either. .The definition of anesthesia is the insensitivity to pain, especially as artificially induced by the administration of gases or the injection of drugs before surgical operations. He was the first person to announce this discovery to the world in a paper he wrote. He did more than any other person to bring anesthesia before the medical public of the USA and Europe and he advocated its value for the …show more content…

The remaining fragments would remain for a later session for removal. This resulted in much discomfort and complications as the remaining fragments found an exit on their own. Removing the entire bladder stone in one procedure was a great advancement." The definition of lithotrity - A surgical procedure to pulverize stones in the urinary bladder or urethra so that they can be passed out of the body in the urine. Dr. Bigelow developed a technique to remove a bladder stone in one procedure at one time. This meant less pain and complication for the

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