Editor's Note: Shauna Devine, Ph.D., is a historian of Civil War and American medicine. She has a Ph.D. in medical history and currently holds a joint appointment as a research fellow at the Schulich ...

Anesthesia was in its infancy when the American Civil War began in 1861. The sheer number of casualties gave surgeons on both sides the opportunity to gain experience with the first two anesthetic ...

Anesthesia works by using medications (anesthetics) to temporarily block pain signals from traveling along your nerves to your brain, or by numbing the brain itself to cause unconsciousness. The ...