TY - JOUR ID - 45640 TI - A Short Review on the History of Anesthesia in Ancient Civilizations JO - Journal of Research on History of Medicine JA - RHM LA - en SN - AU - Abdoli, Javad AU - Motamedi, Seyed Ali AU - Zargaran, Arman AD - BS Student at Department of Anesthesiology, Alborz University of Medical Science, Alborz, Iran AD - BS Student at Scientific Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran; BS Student at Department of Anesthesiology, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran AD - PharmD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of History of Medicine, School of Traditional Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran Y1 - 2019 PY - 2019 VL - 8 IS - 3 SP - 147 EP - 156 KW - Anesthesia KW - History KW - Ancient history KW - Persian medicine DO - N2 - Anesthesia is one of the main issues in surgery and has progressed a lot since two centuries ago. The formal history of surgery indicates that beginning of anesthesia backs to the 18th century, but reviewing the history of medicine shows that pain management and anesthesia has a long history in ancient times. The word “anesthesia”, comes from Greek language: an-(means: “without”) and aisthēsis (means: “sensation”), the combination of which means the inhibition of sensation. The oldest reports show that the Sumerians maybe were the first people that they cultivated and harvested narcotic sedative like the opium Poppy as early as 3400 BC and used them as pain killers. There are some texts which show us that Greek and Mesopotamia’s doctors prescribed alcoholic beverages before their surgeries. In the Byzantine time, physicians used an elixir known as “laudanum” that was a good sedative prior the patient’s operation. Ancient Persia and China were as the biggest civilizations, of which medicine anesthesia had a great role in. Also, Persian and other Muslim physicians developed the field of anesthesiology in early medieval era which is called Islamic Golden Age. UR - https://rhm.sums.ac.ir/article_45640.html L1 - https://rhm.sums.ac.ir/article_45640_d5af67c017732f57e6c06201d82dec57.pdf ER -