Anesthetics

I just watched half of a documentary called "Scream! The History of Anesthetics." I knew in an abstract way that surgery before anesthesia sucked. I didn't know how bad it was. Evidently, where observed surgery is (I take it) a sterile procedure today, in the late 1800's in England, it was a form of entertainment. People would go to watch as the surgeon raced the clock to cut away the flesh, saw through the bone, and stich together the flaps of skin in an amputation. Not in a disinterested, intellectual endeavor, but to watch the blood fly, the screams of pain, the skill of the surgeon.

I don't know how they did it. Just hearing the screams in dramatic fashion on the show turned my stomach. Surgery was a very last resort. They discussed records of a woman with an ovarian cyst that weighed more than she did, and a man with a tumor... down there... that he had to carry about in a wheelbarrow. One man, in to have a bladder stone removed was so terrified that he broke free from those restraining him, ran to the bathroom and locked himself in. The surgeon, genteel man that he was came down the hall, broke the door down with his shoulder, dragged the man back to the table, and performed the procedure.

I thought first how good it is to live in the modern era. When the first surgery under anesthesia was done and the patient awoke after having a leg removed and asked when it would all begin, the world changed. "Man Conquers Pain!" If only it were true.

It may be because of reading Philip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand that I link physical and emotional or spiritual pain. We can go through absolutely miserable times in our lives. I wept as I watched an innocuous movie today, simply because of memories that kept coming to mind. But we have to some degree in the modern world distanced pain from healing. Maybe when I hear the screams of utter agony on the operating table, I can sympathize a bit more.

Perhaps it is because I regard sin too lightly that the remedies must be so harsh. This is not mere theater, acted out for the amusement of the crowds, but life-or-death correction of very serious issues.

47 seconds. That's how fast the surgeon could remove a limb (leg or arm, I don't recall - just blood and pulp). If that were allowed to remain, it would surely kill the patient. But even the knowledge of the ultimate good of the pain or a trust in the abilities of the surgeon could not blunt the horror of those moments. To feel as the knife slices skin, muscle, tendon, nerves. To feel the vibration as the saw chews through your bone. To feel the needle and thread stitching up those wounds. I imagine those seconds felt as though a lifetime were passing. But it passed, and the man was saved.

"If your right eye causees you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away, for it is better to enter the kingdom of God half blind than for your whole body to be thrown into Hell. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better to enter the kingdom of God maimed than for your whole body to be thrown into Hell."