Surgical procedures before 1800

What were the key three problems with surgery?

Pain, infection and blood loss

What was the problem with high levels of pain?

Sometimes patients died from shock, and there was very little pain medication at the time to treat it (as very few anaesthetics were used)

Why was there a high chance of infection?

There was a lack of understanding about the cause of disease as germ theory was only discovered in the 1850s

What was the problem with blood loss?

If too much blood was lost, it could kill you

What did these factors mean for surgery?

That it was a quick process to reduce the pain you were exposed to and hopefully reduce death rates from shock or blood loss - even so, mortality rates were usually high due to infections

What was used for pain relief before 1800?

Pain deadening substances such as herbal treatments including hashish, opium and mandrake (some of which were lethal in large doses), as well as alcohol

What were the disadvantages of using alcohol?

It made the heart beat faster, making blood loss harder to control, as well as being more difficult to perform surgery on a drunk person with worse outcomes