Editor's Note: Shauna Devine, Ph.D., is a historian of Civil War and American medicine. She has a Ph.D. in medical history and currently holds a joint appointment as a research fellow at the Schulich ...
The origins of applied anesthesia in humans in the Western Hemisphere is a brief and relatively modern history. Liquid ether was identified by Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) in 1540 ...