Body & HealthFact
Before 1846, a good surgeon was fast, not gentle.
On 16 October 1846 William Morton gave the first public ether anaesthesia in Boston. Before that, patients were held down; the fastest surgeons, like Robert Liston, amputated a leg in about two and a half minutes. The date is still called “Ether Day”. Chloroform followed in 1847. Only with anaesthesia could surgeons work slowly and precisely at all.
Useful: Many operations became possible not through better tools, but because pain was removed.
Source: en.wikipedia.org