From Craft to Specialty: A Medical and Social History of Anesthesia and Its Changing Role in Health Care Review

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(More customer reviews)Dr. Shephard has done something unique. He has encapsulated the huge, complex history of anesthesia into 329 pages of text. Not only has he looked at and revealed to us the long and sometimes tortured path of pain relief, particularly the agonizing pain of surgery, but he has done so in a completely captivating manner.
He looks at the social, religious and psychological history of the very idea of relieving human pain but then gets down to the nitty-gritty of the people, the drugs and the equipment needed. There have been a large number of books about small areas of the growth of anesthesia as a specialty central to the whole of acute medicine; for example Morton's courageous demonstration of the utility of ether to render the patient unaware even during the most invasive and long-lasting surgeries has been the central drama in many books and at least one movie.
But the story is so much larger and more complex. Dr. Shephard brilliantly pulls it all together in a completely absorbing narrative and brings the personalities and drives of our founders to vivid life. It is an entrancing read that goes from early human history to the present day - something no previous author has succeeded in doing successfully. He brings the reader right up to date in understanding why we now have so many sub-specialties such as anesthesia for tiny babies, for sick elderly people with very bad hearts or long and complicated brain operations during which the surgeon needs . albeit briefly - to talk with the patient.
He reveals how anesthesia has gone from a completely empirical drop-the- chloroform on a rag (and not understanding at all what was happening to the patient) to our present situation where we know from moment to moment how the patient's every organ is working.
He writes beautiful clear English illuminated by vignette-biographies of the great names in the specialty.
A young anesthesiologist reading this book will understand where he or she stands in this remarkable history and in so doing will be aided in improving the future care and safety of our patients.
In my opinion this will become the standard history of anesthesia for the foreseeable future.

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From Craft to Specialty is a medical and social history of surgical anesthesia, from long before the advent of 'modem' clinical anesthesia in 1846 to the present day. It emphasizes the fact that, over the past century and a half, anesthesia has progressed from being a craft based on empirical knowledge, to a discipline in which a scientific approach began to shape its practice, and, finally, in the 1930s,to become a medical specialty that encompassed research and formal education and certification of practitioners as well as practice. Two other aspects of change in anesthesia are stressed in this comprehensive history. One concerns the change in the nature and scope of anesthesia. Today, anesthesiologists work not only in the technically sophisticated environment of operating rooms but also elsewhere, specializing in the management of pain due to various causes, participating in intensive care of the critically ill, and involving themselves also in the resuscitation of victims of sudden collapse. The second aspect of change follows on the first, for the diversity of the practice of anesthesiology is such that it now plays an increasingly important part in health care.

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