Can you imagine having a tooth pulled without novocaine? Having an ingrown toenail treated without local anesthesia? What about having a wound of some kind cauterized with a red-hot poker while you’re watching, fully alert? As one doctor says in this week’s cover articles, medicine at one time was like the Spanish Inquisition. The screams of patients haunted him decades later.
But we can thank our neighbor from up the road, Crawford W. Long, for putting an end to all that. He invented the modern branch of medicine that so many people have difficulty pronouncing: anesthesia (saying anesthesiologist even harder for some). Today is the 198th anniversary of his birth.
Elsewhere in this issue:
• It may not have been as bad as the Spanish Inquisition, but don’t miss the harrowing tale of one family’s ordeal in Medicine in the First Person on page 6.
• The blog spot on page 11 has some eye-opening (and for far too many people, jaw-dropping) data about the growth of fast food – and we don’t mean the industry; we mean fast food itself.
• The Patient Perspective relates one of those odd situations that only an insurance company can cause. Have you ever had one of these weird transactions?
There’s tons more good reading. Just click and dive in.