NINE
Anesthesia
“The medical profession can be the greatest factor for good in
America. The greatest asset of a nation is the health of its people
... the real job of the medical profession is the extension of
knowledge of what the medicine of today is doing and can do in
the future, and this must be done by collective effort.”
—William James Mayo^1“Suffering so great as I underwent cannot be expressed in words
... but the blank whirlwind of emotion, the horror of great
darkness, and the sense of desertion by God and man, which
swept through my mind, and overwhelmed my heart, I can never
forget.”
—J. Ashhurst^2How did you get here?
Why are you here?
These existential questions mirror the first question we ask a new
acquaintance, “Where are you from?” We want to understand our origins
and the meaning of our existence. And the search for meaning and the
reasons for our existence are never more imperative than when we are
suffering.
Even before scientists and physicians understood the intricacies of the
human body and the concepts of disease and healing, there was a necessary
preoccupation with the alleviation of pain. If medicine had only evolved to