The link you're looking for is the main article here, no? It doesn't explicitly say that heart surgeries were done without painkillers, but its literally talkin

The link you're looking for is the main article here, no? It doesn't explicitly say that heart surgeries were done without painkillers, but its literally talking about how surgeries for newborns (heart surgeries are in that set) generally did not involve anesthetics? > Most American hospitals are now believed to give anesthesia for major surgery. Key words being: most, believed, major, and now. But also to answer your question: > In the preface to the book 1000 Doctors Against Vivisection, Hans Ruesch cites the Lancet and Parade Magazine: >> So the Lancet, Britain's most authoritative medical journal, could report with its usual professional aloofness in its January 31, 1987 issue that at Oxford's John Radcliffe Teaching Hospital eight premature babies had been subjected to open-heart surgery without any anesthesia. The controversy that flared briefly in a few press organs concerned mainly the question as to whether the babies had or had not received painkillers during the operation.