Surgery

Objection to anaesthetics:

• religion - interferring with God's plan
• afraid of side effects
• people were suspicious of doctors who used anaesthetics
• doctors liked their patients to be alive as then they knew they were alive

Problems with anaesthetics:

caused a rise in surgery death rate because:

• surgeons performed more complicated operations that were more likely to go wrong
• they cut deeper, so the patient was more likely to die from infection/blood loss
• surgeons took longer, so the patient was more likely to die from infection/blood loss

This lead to the Black Period in surgery 1850-1870