How is A Same-Sex Marriage like Anesthesia?

The discovery and promotion of anesthesia [c. 1845], regardless of its true father, also demonstrated the difficulties of pursing medical research in mid-nineteenth-century America. An indifference to basic investigatory work permeated clinical practice. Most physicians, affected by poor education and training and their own financial shortcomings, sought in medicine only the immediate means to solve a patient's problem. To think beyond the current crisis was rarely possible. Even a research discovery as significant as anesthesia continued to meet with profound skepticism. "I think anesthesia is of the devil, and I cannot give my sanction to any Satanic influence which depreives a man of the capacity to recognize the law," wrote one physician several years later. "I wish there were no such thing as anesthesia! I do not think men should be prevented from passing through what God intended them to endure."

[from: Ira Rutkow, Seeking the Cure : A History of Medicine in America, New York, Scribner, 2010, pp 59–60]

Posted on May 17, 2012 at 23.18 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.

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  1. Written by rightsaidfred
    on Sunday, 21 July 2013 at 21.26
    Permalink

    Or maybe it is like Lamarkism? Or Lysenkoism? Just because something is new and vetted by liberals doesn't make it the best course of action.

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