RT Book, Section A1 Deschner, Bonnie A1 Robards, Christopher A1 Somasundaram, Lakshmanasamy A1 Harrop-Griffiths, William A2 Hadzic, Admir SR Print(0) ID 3497000 T1 Chapter 1. The History of Local Anesthesia T2 NYSORA Textbook of Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Management YR 2007 FD 2007 PB The McGraw-Hill Companies PP New York, NY SN 9780071449069 LK accessanesthesiology.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=3497000 RD 2024/03/29 AB The history of local anesthesia suffers, if it suffers from anything, from the lack of a distinct Eureka moment. It is arguable that we do not have in our history a pivotal day that signified the wholesale change from an era before local anesthesia to the dawn of a new and wonderful age that included parts of the body being rendered insensate for therapeutic reasons. We do not have the equivalent of 16 October 1846 and the trembling hands of William Thomas Green Morton. What we have is a remarkably slow concatenation of the three elements necessary for the administration of the vast majority of local anesthetics: a syringe, a needle, and a local anesthetic drug. Many, however, would argue that to these three need be added several other factors: a detailed knowledge of anatomy and an appreciation of the body's pain mechanisms and more objective methods to localize peripheral nerves and monitor administration of local anesthetics. The authors make no excuse for concentrating in this chapter on the early history of local anesthesia in order to dissect the development of these three vital components.