Before the discovery of ether anesthesia, surgery was an excruciating experience for patients, their loved ones and even the surgeons who performed the operations.

In the 1840s, an important scientific breakthrough changed the course of medical history—the discovery of anesthesia. However, over several decades leading up to that historic discovery, the potential for less painful surgery existed without anyone managing to connect the dots between a series of scientific developments with nitrous oxide and the need for anesthesia in surgery. Those decades presented a stark missed opportunity for all surgery patients of the time, and a true conundrum affectionately known as “laughing gas.”

In the prologue for season 3 of “Anesthesiology News presents The Etherist,” we delve into the decades-long conundrum of the coexistence of anesthesia—in the form of nitrous oxide and ether—and the continuation of painful surgery during the early 19th century.

Episode 1 of The Etherist will be available on Oct. 16, 2021—175 years after the original demonstration of ether anesthesia, now known as Ether Day.

Sponsored by Masimo and Medtronic.

Suggested Reading

• Fenster JM. Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America’s Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It. Perennial; 2002.
• Mets B. Leadership in Anaesthesia: Five Pioneers of the Deadly Quest for Surgical Insensibility. Cambridge Scholars Publishing; 2021.
• Mets B. Waking Up Safer?: An Anesthesiologist’s Record. SilverWood Books; 2018.
• Snow SJ. Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaethetics Changed the World. Oxford University Press; 2008.
• Sykes K, Bunker J. Anaesthesia and the Practice of Medicine: Historical Perspectives. 1st ed. CRC Press; 2007.

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