This Month in Anesthesia History: October
1632 October 20: Christopher Wren is born in London . Around 1660 the English architect and astronomer began to experiment with the transfusion of blood between animals and intravenous injections into animals. An account of his work was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1665. Wren, the greatest English architect of his time who designed many of London 's cathedrals, died in that city in February, 1723. A much earlier attempt at blood transfusion was described by Stefano Infessura [ca. 1435-1500], an anti-papist lawyer in Rome . According to Infessura's Diary of the City of Rome, when Pope Innocent VIII was on his deathbed, a Jewish physician suggested infusing blood from three ten year-old boys into the pontiff's veins. All three donors died and Innocent himself died on July 25, 1492. The Catholic Encyclopedia warns that Infessura's work is full of gossip and not to be trusted.
1708 October 16: Swiss scientist and writer Albrecht von Haller, father of experimental physiology, is born. He graduated from medical school in Leiden at age 19 and returned to Bern where he lectured on anatomy and wrote poetry. His research on the irritability or contractility of muscle tissue was published in 1732 as A Dissertation on the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals. In 1736 he was appointed professor of anatomy at the University of Gottingen 's medical school, where he spent 17 years. In 1753 he returned again to Bern , where he died in 1777. Haller published numerous other works, including bibligraphies on anatomy, surgery, botany and medicine and a very popular collection of poems. A brief review of his life is available here.
1760 October 23: Japanese physician Hanaoka Seishu is born in Hirayama. In October 1805 Seishu performs an operation for breast cancer using "tsusensan" as an anesthetic. The research behind this event is portrayed in Sawako Ariyoshi's novel The Doctor's Wife. Seishu died on October 2, 1835.
