Anesthesiology News Presents

Ep 2: The Dreadful Discovery of Chloroform (The Etherist, Season 3)

Episode Notes

The discovery of chloroform was closely intertwined with ether anesthesia because of the relative closeness of their discoveries, but it did not take long for the early pioneers of anesthesia use to understand the enormous difference between the two anesthetic agents.

From October 1846 to November 1847, anesthesia providers used ether to ease pain in surgery and it might have seemed as if a golden age in medicine was just beginning, but tragedy would eventually strike the growing specialty of anesthesiology. Hannah Greener’s experience with the use of chloroform anesthesia as a patient would mark a major crisis point for the early advocates of anesthesia.

This season of the series is about revisiting the history of anesthesiology while also reimagining those events based on what we know today. But that story can’t be told without also diving into the dangers of the use of anesthesia. It is perhaps the most important piece of knowledge that we possess now, that those early anesthesiologists were not sufficiently aware of at the time.

This is episode 2 of season 3 of “Anesthesiology News presents The Etherist.”

Sponsored by Masimo and Medtronic.

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