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Thanks for the summary and addendum - not sure why you're getting downvotes. > the vast majority of civil war surgeries involved some form of anesthesia I can

Thanks for the summary and addendum - not sure why you're getting downvotes. > the vast majority of civil war surgeries involved some form of anesthesia I can't find the article at the moment but I recall seeing somewhere that it was pretty common for incorrect amounts of anesthesia to be administered and many patients waking up (or worse, being aware of their surroundings and able to feel pain but being unable to move or scream; a personal nightmare of mine). Even if this was a small minority of cases it's still haunting enough to leave a legend that roughly corresponds to the myth you cite.

sandworm101 8y ago
>> common for incorrect amounts of anesthesia to be administered and many patients waking up It is a thing, but not during the civil war. The horror story happens when using drugs meant to paralyze internal organs. Those drugs don't make you sleep, just paralyze you and your organs so your intestines aren't squirming around as the doc tries to fix something. So if they give you that, but not the actual anesthetic, things go bad. Modern hospitals have devices to pick up on this situation. (In the extreme situation of full consciousness, anyone monitoring heart rate will notice something is very wrong.) In civil war days this didn't happen as they didn't have the artificial respiration necessary to support such drugs. You could easily have been given not enough, but the paralysis-but-awake thing (true "anesthesia awareness") wouldn't happen.
- srean 8y ago
  In addition surgery, another place where this has chances of happening is in execution by lethal injection. One key ingredient, Pancuronium bromide, is a potent muscle relaxant. It paralyzes all voluntary muscles. You would have quite a bit of agony in store, if the pentothal dose was not adequate.
  - rscho 8y ago
    The main use of neuromuscular blockers is making it cheaper and faster. You can kill someone just as well with hypnotic drugs alone using a much higher dose, and using neuromuscular blockers as a reason to decrease hypnosis is IMO f*ing TORTURE. That a developed country cannot even find a way to kill people in a proper manner is beyond me.
- madengr 8y ago
  There was a French movie about that. Some thug killed a surgeons family, so he uses that paralysis drug to perform a colostomy, amongst other tortures.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    There was also a hollywood movie, iirc starting Mila Kunis, called "Awake". Not something I would ever watch but I remember the commercials.
- rscho 8y ago
  I'd like to respectfully make you aware of some imprecisions in your statements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromuscular-blocking_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromuscular-blocking_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesia_awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesia_awareness Specifically, neuromuscular blockers is what you seem to be referring to. Those paralyze only muscle, not other organs, and therefore have little influence on intestines. They are of multiple uses to both the anesthesiologist (intubation) and surgeons (easier to reach places normally crammed up by active muscle). There are ways to reduce intestinal activity specifically, but those are not very efficient (glucagon). As for awareness situations, you are right in that they are more likely with neuromuscular blockers on board. However, research shows that the surgical context is of great importance, and situations where: - the patient is perceived as most fragile (cardiac surgery) - or where things go too fast (emergency C-section) are most at risk, due respectively to fear of overdose in fragile patients and immediate threat to life to the unborn child. Detection of true awareness is difficult, since many people will tell you they woke up during surgery while it was in fact the end of surgery (from personal experience). It is not known how frequent true awareness really is, but it is commonly accepted to be quite rare, and this goes along with my personal experience. If you are reasonably healthy, the chance of true awareness during surgery is IMO vanishingly small. Civil war soldiers did indeed not have neuromuscular blockers, but since efficient sleep medication did not exist, true awareness was far more frequent (probably the norm, in fact).

sandworm101 8y ago

>> common for incorrect amounts of anesthesia to be administered and many patients waking up It is a thing, but not during the civil war. The horror story happens when using drugs meant to paralyze internal organs. Those drugs don't make you sleep, just paralyze you and your organs so your intestines aren't squirming around as the doc tries to fix something. So if they give you that, but not the actual anesthetic, things go bad. Modern hospitals have devices to pick up on this situation. (In the extreme situation of full consciousness, anyone monitoring heart rate will notice something is very wrong.) In civil war days this didn't happen as they didn't have the artificial respiration necessary to support such drugs. You could easily have been given not enough, but the paralysis-but-awake thing (true "anesthesia awareness") wouldn't happen.

srean 8y ago
In addition surgery, another place where this has chances of happening is in execution by lethal injection. One key ingredient, Pancuronium bromide, is a potent muscle relaxant. It paralyzes all voluntary muscles. You would have quite a bit of agony in store, if the pentothal dose was not adequate.
- rscho 8y ago
  The main use of neuromuscular blockers is making it cheaper and faster. You can kill someone just as well with hypnotic drugs alone using a much higher dose, and using neuromuscular blockers as a reason to decrease hypnosis is IMO f*ing TORTURE. That a developed country cannot even find a way to kill people in a proper manner is beyond me.
madengr 8y ago
There was a French movie about that. Some thug killed a surgeons family, so he uses that paralysis drug to perform a colostomy, amongst other tortures.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  There was also a hollywood movie, iirc starting Mila Kunis, called "Awake". Not something I would ever watch but I remember the commercials.
rscho 8y ago
I'd like to respectfully make you aware of some imprecisions in your statements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromuscular-blocking_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromuscular-blocking_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesia_awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesia_awareness Specifically, neuromuscular blockers is what you seem to be referring to. Those paralyze only muscle, not other organs, and therefore have little influence on intestines. They are of multiple uses to both the anesthesiologist (intubation) and surgeons (easier to reach places normally crammed up by active muscle). There are ways to reduce intestinal activity specifically, but those are not very efficient (glucagon). As for awareness situations, you are right in that they are more likely with neuromuscular blockers on board. However, research shows that the surgical context is of great importance, and situations where: - the patient is perceived as most fragile (cardiac surgery) - or where things go too fast (emergency C-section) are most at risk, due respectively to fear of overdose in fragile patients and immediate threat to life to the unborn child. Detection of true awareness is difficult, since many people will tell you they woke up during surgery while it was in fact the end of surgery (from personal experience). It is not known how frequent true awareness really is, but it is commonly accepted to be quite rare, and this goes along with my personal experience. If you are reasonably healthy, the chance of true awareness during surgery is IMO vanishingly small. Civil war soldiers did indeed not have neuromuscular blockers, but since efficient sleep medication did not exist, true awareness was far more frequent (probably the norm, in fact).