andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-2053 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Atul Gawande (the thinking man’s Malcolm Gladwell) asks : Why do some innovations spread so swiftly and others so slowly? Consider the very different trajectories of surgical anesthesia and antiseptics, both of which were discovered in the nineteenth century. The first public demonstration of anesthesia was in 1846. The Boston surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow was approached by a local dentist named William Morton, who insisted that he had found a gas that could render patients insensible to the pain of surgery. That was a dramatic claim. In those days, even a minor tooth extraction was excruciating. Without effective pain control, surgeons learned to work with slashing speed. Attendants pinned patients down as they screamed and thrashed, until they fainted from the agony. Nothing ever tried had made much difference. Nonetheless, Bigelow agreed to let Morton demonstrate his claim. On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Morton administered his gas through an inhaler in
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1 Consider the very different trajectories of surgical anesthesia and antiseptics, both of which were discovered in the nineteenth century. [sent-2, score-0.6]
2 The first public demonstration of anesthesia was in 1846. [sent-3, score-0.314]
3 The Boston surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow was approached by a local dentist named William Morton, who insisted that he had found a gas that could render patients insensible to the pain of surgery. [sent-4, score-0.552]
4 Without effective pain control, surgeons learned to work with slashing speed. [sent-7, score-0.472]
5 Attendants pinned patients down as they screamed and thrashed, until they fainted from the agony. [sent-8, score-0.269]
6 On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Morton administered his gas through an inhaler in the mouth of a young man undergoing the excision of a tumor in his jaw. [sent-11, score-0.468]
7 The following day, the gas left a woman, undergoing surgery to cut a large tumor from her upper arm, completely silent and motionless. [sent-13, score-0.48]
8 By mid-December, surgeons were administering ether to patients in Paris and London. [sent-20, score-0.612]
9 By February, anesthesia had been used in almost all the capitals of Europe, and by June in most regions of the world. [sent-21, score-0.314]
10 It was the single biggest killer of surgical patients . [sent-24, score-0.459]
11 During the next few years, he perfected ways to use carbolic acid for cleansing hands and wounds and destroying any germs that might enter the operating field. [sent-32, score-0.422]
12 It was a generation before Lister’s recommendations became routine and the next steps were taken toward the modern standard of asepsis—that is, entirely excluding germs from the surgical field, using heat-sterilized instruments and surgical teams clad in sterile gowns and gloves. [sent-39, score-0.683]
13 Gawande asks why, and shoots down a couple of natural explanations: Did the spread of anesthesia and antisepsis differ for economic reasons? [sent-41, score-0.423]
14 Besides, live patients were more likely to make good on their surgery bill. [sent-44, score-0.387]
15 Obtaining ether and constructing the inhaler could be difficult. [sent-60, score-0.21]
16 First, one combatted a visible and immediate problem (pain); the other combatted an invisible problem (germs) whose effects wouldn’t be manifest until well after the operation. [sent-66, score-0.296]
17 Anesthesia changed surgery from a brutal, time-pressured assault on a shrieking patient to a quiet, considered procedure. [sent-68, score-0.229]
18 Listerism, by contrast, required the operator to work in a shower of carbolic acid. [sent-69, score-0.223]
19 And if you tell people that pushing the button doesn’t really work, they get all bristly on you. [sent-91, score-0.205]
20 I know that these methods have become popular—but, then again, my neighbors are getting their apartments bombed for roaches every month, they just keep on doing it. [sent-95, score-0.299]
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