Some observations on a mode of performing Operations on Irritable Patients, with a Case where the practice was successfully employed

Surgery without pain--Part II: 1800-1847

This paper was commissioned to cover the beginning of anaesthesia: the transition from surgical operations with pain to those without. It reviews some previous pre-anaesthetic histories (Part I): it focuses upon attitudes to pain; and it seeks evidence from the one hundred years before the discovery of anaesthesia. Finally (Part II) it outlines the introduction of nitrous oxide and of ether anaesthesia.