Even though surgeries are super common these days, it’s still pretty incredible that surgeons can cut people open, root around and people leave feeling better. We’ve learned how to remove tumors, fix brains, stitch wounds, and even swap out body parts. In the first of three episodes, we’re going to talk about how we got here through a history of trial and error and why anesthesia might be the greatest and weirdest thing our species has accomplished in medicine thus far.
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This all leads to something that a lot of us don't think about when it comes to improving the field of surgery and that’s how we visualize the human body. For a really long time, surgeons were going in blind. They didn’t know what our organs looked like or how they connected to each other.
In a lot of ways, having drawings and not just written text about anatomy, was a serious leap forward. Even today, the advancements in being able to see inside the human body are key to making surgeons better and better at their jobs. If a surgeon can 3D-print a heart to explore or practice in VR before ever picking up a real scalpel, then surgery will be safer than ever. We’ll save all that for episode three but it’s safe to say that I’m pretty pumped about it.
Beyond advances in visualization, there are two things that skyrocketed the field of surgery. These changed it from an experimental field positioned as a painful last resort to a commonplace miracle cure. They are anesthesia and antiseptics.
Anesthesia! The ability to knock someone out while you cut them open just made everything easier. There were attempts to ease a patient's pain using alcohol, opium, and herbs to lessen the pain of surgery for patients. Eventually ether was discovered, but it still wasn’t ideal.
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Read More:
Has the mystery as to why primitive surgeons performed cranial surgery been solved?
“Trephination (or trepanation) of the human skull is the oldest documented surgical procedure performed by man. Trephined skulls have been found from the Old World of Europe and Asia to the New World, particularly Peru in South America, from the Neolithic age to the very dawn of history.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4427816/
History of Medicine: Ancient Indian Nose Jobs & the Origins of Plastic Surgery
“During the 6th Century BCE, an Indian physician named Sushruta – widely regarded in India as the ‘father of surgery’ – wrote one of the world’s earliest works on medicine and surgery. The Sushruta Samhita documented the etiology of more than 1,100 diseases, the use of hundreds of medicinal plants, and instructions for performing scores of surgical procedures – including three types of skin grafts and reconstruction of the nose.”
https://columbiasurgery.org/news/2015/05/28/history-medicine-ancient-indian-nose-jobs-origins-plastic-surgery
Solving the 175-year-old medical mystery of anesthesia’s effects
“Using modern nanoscale microscopic techniques, plus clever experiments in living cells and fruit flies, the scientists show how clusters of lipids in the cell membrane serve as a missing go-between in a two-part mechanism. Temporary exposure to anesthesia causes the lipid clusters to move from an ordered state, to a disordered one, and then back again, leading to a multitude of subsequent effects that ultimately cause changes in consciousness. And this freezes neurons’ ability to fire, and thus leads to loss of consciousness.”
https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2020/20200529-hansen-lerner-anesthesia.html
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Seeker+ is your home for deep dives, fun facts, rabbit holes, and more. Join host Julian Huguet as he unapologetically nerds out on the oddball history, astounding science and intriguing future around topics that will make you the smartest person at your next trivia night.
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