THE LIVING CORPSE: THE LIVING INTERIOR, ANESTHESIA, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SURGICAL PATIENT IN BRITAIN AND AMERICA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

Access to the interior of the living body had always been difficult in medicine. Physicians longed for the opportunity to explore it but the emotionality and mobility of the patient during surgery had weighed on their conscience. Central to this experience was pain, and consciousness was the agent that allowed the perception of it. It would not be until the middle of the nineteenth century that such an opportunity had finally, allowed surgeons that access—to the Living Interior of the human body. Anesthesia negated pain by disconnecting consciousness from the lived experience of surgery. This had silenced patients and provided surgeons access to the Living Interior unrestricted by time and emotionality. Surgeons perceived the unconscious patient laid out on the surgical table much like how cadavers laid upon the dissection table under their knife and scrutiny. Anesthesia, they thought, blurred the line between the living and the dead, and this had aided in the objectification of the patient. They perceived the anesthetized patient as dead, still and unmoving, much like a corpse; yet alive. The anesthetized patient I contend, was transformed into a Living Corpse. And this reduction of the patient during surgery in the nineteenth century in America and Britain had a profound effect on the relationship between physicians and the surgical body ever since. In order investigate the effect that inhalation anesthesia had on surgery in the mid-19th century, I focused on physicians and surgeons practicing at the time of its discovery. I explored their academic letters, autobiographies, and published reflections on the state of their craft