A History of Anesthesia in South America

Abstract

Before the discovery of anesthesia, clergy and shamans used opium, herbal extracts, and alcohol to diminish surgical pain. Infection and mortality were great. By 1847, ether anesthesia was used in Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela, and in 1848, in Chile. By 1850, chloroform displaced ether. Surgeons gave or directed anesthetic delivery by colleagues, nurses, medical students, orderlies, midwives, priests or sisters. Chloroform use continued until the late 1800s when reports of cardiac arrest and liver damage decreased its appeal. French surgeon Ombrédanne invented an ether inhaler in 1908 that became the preferred method of anesthetic delivery in the first half of the 1900s. Waters’ 1930s experiences with cyclopropane prompted its use until fatalities from explosions occurred in Chile and Peru. Various barbiturates were given in the 1920s and 1930s, with thiopental becoming the preferred induction agent throughout Latin America. Curare was used by the early-mid 1940s in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay. Many Latin American countries took up anesthesia with the inexpensive combination of procaine and thiopental, after its description in Argentina in 1949. Halothane replaced ether in the 1960s.