Today in Technology History
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November 21
The words we use to describe technology come from many different sources. The words telephone, submarine, thermostat, and automobile, for example, all come from Greek and Latin roots that are easy to figure out. Sometimes we just name technology after what it does: the words calculator, computer and elevator all come from verbs. We often name technology after a person, sometimes obviously (such as Gatling guns and Geiger counters) and sometimes not obviously (such as shrapnel and the zeppelin).
The word anesthesia is unusual because we know the precise date that term was devised: exactly 155 years ago. In a public demonstration in 1846, surgeons in Boston successfully used ether to render a patient insensate before an operation. Those surgeons later approached Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and asked him to name the valuable new technology.
Holmes (1809-1894) was a Boston doctor and anatomy professor -- and he happened also to be a poet of considerable renown. (Incidentally, his son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., would be one of America's most important Supreme Court justices.)
On November 21, 1846, Holmes wrote a letter suggesting the term "anęsthesia," which comes from the Greek for "no feeling" or "no touch." Holmes thought carefully about his recommendation, since he believed that the name would be "repeated by the tongues of every civilized race of mankind" as knowledge of the invention spread around the world.
There is an interesting epilogue to this story. There was a great controversy over who actually invented anesthesia, with several doctors claiming credit. Years later, the Boston authorities proposed to erect a monument honoring the inventor but, being uncertain about which doctor's name belonged on the monument, they consulted Dr. Holmes. He suggested that the inscription on the monument should read "To E(i)ther."
Related links:
Click here to read Holmes's entire letter suggesting the word "anesthesia."
Click here to read more about the word "anesthesia."
Click here to read some of Holmes's poetry.
We have written tech history messages about anesthesia before. Click here and here to read those past messages.
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