April saw many seminal events cardinal to the growth of anesthesia. Dentists, epidemiologists, and military physicians all made their mark in history through their contributions to anesthesiology. Through the ages, the month of April saw anesthesiology shaping into a more definite science with momentous papers such as Arthur Guedel's famous classification of the stages of ether anesthesia. But at the other end of the spectrum, April also saw the downright acrimonious arguments against the use of oxygen with nitrous oxide anesthesia in the fear that it would “dilute it.” This seems farcical now but was much believed in the 1890s.
April 7, 1847: The first obstetric anesthetic is administered
Nathan Cooley Keep: Dentist, anesthesiologist and forensic scientist. This man did it all!
Nathan Cooley Keep administered the first obstetric anesthetic in the United States in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Keep was a prominent physician of the Boston area and the first Dean...
