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If the Assyrians hadn’t known an effective method to cause “anesthesia” (which consisted of compressing the carotid to go into a coma for cerebral ischemia), although at risk the danger, medicine wouldn’t have been as we know it. Also many surgery techniques wouldn’t have created and developed.
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The development of new molecules (cocaine, hexobarbital) which can be administered by others ways (spinal puncture, intravenous injections) allowed new methods for surgery and the beginning of Anesthesia. Anesthetics are substances administered to deaden pain or produce a state of anesthesia (a condition in which some or all of the senses, especially touch, stop functioning or are reduced).
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If people hadn’t used different plants, herbal extracts, oral anesthetic potion and inhaled anesthetics, the first surgery wouldn’t have occurred and Kitab al-Tasrif, the first illustrated work of surgery wouldn’t have been published.
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If antique cultures hadn’t discovered the anesthesia, Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish anatomist and physician, shouldn’t have written the most influential books of human anatomy , “De humani corporis fabrica” (On the structure of the Human Body) which describes tracheal intubation and artificial breathing.
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If William Harvey, an English physician, hadn’t described completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood, we couldn’t have understood how all physical process occurred in human body.
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If Sigismund Elsholtz hadn’t injected opium dilution to develop pain insensibility, The anesthesia wouldn’t have found its fundamentals not only for surgery but also for pain management.
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If Joseph Priestley hadn’t discovered nitrous oxide, nitric oxide, ammonia, hydrogen chloride and oxygen, Thomas Beddoes, an English physician and teacher of medicine, wouldn’t have advanced in offering treatment for diseases previously thought to de untreatable such as asthma and tuberculosis.
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If Friedrich Sertürner hadn´t discovered the morphine from opium and hadn’t named morphine after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, we wouldn’t have known it as a potent opiate analgesic medication. Moreover we wouldn’t have used it to relieve severe or agonizing pain and suffering.
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If Sir James Young Simpson hadn’t discovered the anesthetic properties of chloroform and hadn’t successfully introduced it for general medical use, patients would have had irritated their lungs caused by the used of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) used by the first time in 1799.
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If the practices of anesthesia hadn´t changed, we wouldn´t have seen the transformation of tracheotomy, endoscopy and non-surgical tracheal intubation’s practices. Critical care medicine, emergency medicine, gastroenterology and surgery wouldn’t have progressed from archaic practices.
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If many intravenous and inhalational anesthetics hadn’t developed and bought, Jansen Pharmaceutica shouldn’t have developed over 80 pharmaceutical compounds like haloperidol, droperidol, sufentanil, alfentanil, carfentanil and lofentanil.
