🛠️ Invention or technique

Hanaoka Seishū's tsūsensan general anaesthesia

Anestesia general con tsūsensan (Hanaoka Seishū)

Date
1804 · confidence high
Place
Nate, Kinokawa, Wakayama, Japan
Credited to
Hanaoka Seishū
People
👤 Hanaoka Seishū1760–1835
Field
Life & health

What it is

A mastectomy for breast cancer performed under general anaesthesia using a potion of thorn apple, monkshood and other plants, 42 years before ether was used in Boston. Hanaoka operated on more than a hundred patients this way.

As it was not published outside Japan, it had no influence on Western anaesthesia; his mother and wife took part in the trials, and his wife went blind as a result.

What it led to

  • cancer surgery in Japan
  • Hanaoka's surgical school

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