The History of Anesthesia: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on the History of Anesthesia, Santiago, Spain, 19-23 September 2001

The history of anesthesia shows the history and evolution of medicine in the last 150 years. It had a strong impact on 19th century medicine, and unquestionably anesthesia changed surgery, allowing surgeons to perform operations technically impossible before the introduction of anesthesia. The fight against pain and the discovery of a means to abolish pain had an important social impact, and the history of anesthesia reflects social history in the 19th and 20th century.

In this volume there are topics that are not extensively addressed in other books, beginning with a section about anesthesia in the antiquity, and including sections about anesthesia and the arts, anesthesia and society and the history of oxygen, amongst others.