Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World by Stephanie J. Snow

Abstract

188 BOOKREVIEWS post-war psychiatrist in theUK,' wielding wa profound influence on clinical practice, training and academic research' (p. 3). His report conveys a keen eye for detail and a candid assessment of character as he reviews the human and other resources available at psychiatric centres and related bodies inHolland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy,Hungary, Austria, Poland, Russia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. (Due tohis Jewish heritage, Lewis did not visit Germany, whose university kliniks had provided a model for theRF's reforms inmedicine, and due to the Spanish civil war, he did not visit Spain.) It also demonstrates his fundamental orientation tomental illness as a consequence of interaction between heredity, physical disease, and emotional development; his reservations about biological treatments such as leucotomy, electro-convulsive therapy, and insulin coma therapy; his skepticism about thevalidity of psychoanalysis; and his interest in studying social psychiatry and occupational therapy.While the director of theRF's Division ofMedical Education from 1930, Alan Gregg, was interested inpsychoanalysis, he and others from the RF applauded the report, finding it informative and useful. European Psychiatry on theEve ofWar draws on a wide range of primary sources, including correspondence held by theBethlem Royal Hospital Archives and theRockefeller Archive Center, todemonstrate thecrucial involvement of theRF in thedevelopment of the Maudsley Hospital and therefore of English psychiatry. Importantly too, it expands on historical accounts of theMaudsley Hospital, Edward Mapother, and Aubrey Lewis in the 1930s, providing fresh insights on psychiatry in the shadow ofwar. ANN WESTMORE, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Stephanie J. Snow, Blessed Days ofAnaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed theWorld. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). ISBN 978-0-19-280586-7. 220 pp. In her latestwork, Blessed Days ofAnaesthesia, historian Stephanie Snow builds on her previous academic publications to bring the history of anaesthesia to a general audience. Snow's immensely readable book traces the early life of inhalation anaesthesia through its emergence from scientific experiments in the late-eighteenth Health& History !!/! 2009 189 century, to its application in surgery in themid-nineteenth century, and the subsequent developments of general and local anaesthesia into the twentieth century. The first public demonstration of inhalation anaesthesia, using ether, took place atMassachusetts General Hospital in Boston on 19October 1846. Though medical and nonmedical practitioners had experimented with ether and nitrous oxide in the years prior to this event, itwas this public demonstration that caught the imagination of themedical community and the general public, initiating one of the greatest changes inmedical understanding and practice of the nineteenth century. For medicine, the nineteenth century was an era of dramatic change, from the new theories and practices of antisepsis and asepsis, to increased government regulation of the training and practices of themedical profession. While Snow places anaesthesia within this context of medical change, she gives equal significance to humanitarian and social changes that took place in the nineteenth century, and the complex role anaesthesia played in such changes, as itchallenged themeaning and purpose of pain inVictorian society. The field of accessible, broad-ranging histories of anaesthesia is surprisingly large, drawing contributions from both physicians and historians. Some works in thisfield are sweeping surveys of the emergence of a new medical technology, while others focus more closely on single incidents, usually various 'firsts' in anaesthesia. While Snow's work follows a loosely chronological structure, her chapters are organised thematically, which serves her purpose of examining the social and cultural impact of anaesthesia inVictorian society, as well as the medical impact of thenew technology. Snow's attention tocontext and to the reception of anaesthesia by thepatients, not only thepractitioners, is refreshing and makes thiswork superior toothers in thisfield. The greater part of Snow's study concentrates on the nineteenth century, focusing on the twomost widely used anaesthetic agents, ether and chloroform. Most of the early experimentation, development, and controversy surrounding inhalation anaesthesia occurred in the United States and the United Kingdom, and these two countries comprise themain spheres of action in this book. The author does however attempt to position anaesthesia in a more global context, particularly in relation to anaesthetic developments in Europe and theplace of anaesthesia inBritain's imperial project. Snow explores anaesthesia in action in dental, surgical, and obstetric practices. She devotes particular attention to the...