Anesthesia Student Survival Guide.pdf - Index of

History of Anesthesia
and Introduction to the Specialty
David C. Lai
Chapter 2
For maximum impact, it is recommended that the case study and questions found
on page xvii are reviewed before reading this chapter.
Introduction
Welcome to the exciting and fast-paced specialty of Anesthesiology! As a medical
student rotating through anesthesia, you are fortunate in being able to learn about
anesthesia without having to give it on your own. In the past, despite having little
or no prior experience, medical students were often the ones administering the
anesthetics. The time honored tradition of “See one, do one, teach one” would not
be invoked. Instead, a bottle of ether would be provided, and you would “pour one.”
This is, in fact, what happened in 1894 to a third-year student at the Massachusetts
General Hospital. He was called down from the seats in the famed hospital
amphitheater, sent to a side room with a patient and an orderly, and told to put the
patient to sleep for a surgical demonstration. Knowing nothing about the patient
whatsoever, he proceeded the best he could under the orderly’s directions. The
patient was finally brought into the amphitheater after an interminable amount
of gagging. Once the operation began, there was a great gush of fluid from the
patient’s mouth, most of which he inhaled, and he died. Despite this unfortunate
turn of events, the operation was completed and was deemed a success. That
evening, the student went to see the surgeon to atone for his sins – planning to
then find a different occupation. He was told that he was not responsible for the
man’s death, as he had a strangulated hernia, had been vomiting all night anyway,
J.M. Ehrenfeld et al. (eds.), Anesthesia Student Survival Guide: A Case-Based Approach,
DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-09709-1_2, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
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