Hadzic's Regional Anesthesia > Part I. History > Chapter 1. The History of Local Anesthesia Bonnie Deschner, MD, Christopher Robards, MD, Lakshmanasamy Somasundaram, MD, William Harrop-Griffiths, MD

The History of Local Anesthesia: Introduction

"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...."