[MesaGrande]

The next time you find yourself squirming at the thought of going to the dentist or having an injection, just remember how lucky you are to live in an age of anesthetics, decent sanitation, and all-round high levels of medical expertise.

This certainly has not always been the case – a fact revealed in all its gruesome glory by these gut-wrenching images of 19th-century medical procedures.

Obtained from the archives of the Wellcome Trust and assembled in a new book entitled "Crucial Interventions," the horrific diagrams show how doctors used to cut tumors out of patients’ tongues and breasts, amputate fingers and perform eye surgery, all without anaesthetics.

One can only imagine the amount of pain that these patients must have been in, and those who didn’t die on the operating table later ran a high risk of infection after being sewn back up, with the first antibiotic not being discovered until the 1900s.

Among the operations depicted is a horrendous jaw reconstruction, which appeared in a medical-surgical textbook in the 1840s and shows an unfortunate patient having his face dismantled. Another depicts an arm amputation that looks more like a street stabbing.

Advances in the field of anaesthetics were made over the course of the 1800s, with nitrous oxide gas first being used to put a patient to sleep during a medical procedure in 1846.

While medicine may still be far from perfect, at least we can all rest easy in the knowledge that we’ll never be subjected to any of the grisly operations that were commonplace in centuries gone by.

[mintycbo]

Think I'll just deal with my ailments..thanks.

[Spiffyfable]

Some people achieve orgasms with shit like that....


I'm not one of them

[Sonnirae]

Nice post although shiver inducing....damn!

[Sharon]

Amazing post

[Spiritual]

Ouch..but I think they were knocked out with ether or chlorophyll some other archaic pain killer. I can't imagine theyd do this stuff to people while they were awake.

[danielsan]

These poor people were awake, but doubtlessly liberally dosed with Morphia, such as Laudanum. The pain afterwards, if they made it through the ordeal (blood loss for example) must have been intense.

[vagabond]

Goodgawdalmighty- NO!

[Crazy Puppy]

Damn that looks painful.

[headcoatee]

The parts are numbered as if you'd find instructions like, "Slot A into tab B." The one with the jaw peeled to the side is going to haunt me possibly forever.