Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

It wasn't until 1987 that the American Academy of Pediatrics explicitly recommended giving babies pain relief during surgical procedures. 1987!(!!!) Why? Parental outrage, initially kicked off by a mother whose infant received *open heart surgery* with no pain management.

Did all of these medical professionals really believe that babies felt no pain? How confident were they? Did they think about it often? How could they bring themselves to cut into tiny children, fully awake but paralyzed by muscle relaxants? Do they feel any guilt *now*?

Sometimes it seems utterly insane to me that educational professionals can look at a typical classroom and think "yes, this is what a childhood ought to be." But it's not insane. It's a standard feature of humans to be this recklessly unobservant when it suits you.

I think there is a critical misunderstanding here. In addition to pain control (analgesia) and paralytic, anesthesia is also given.

Paralytic is only given after a patient is fully anesthetized, and only lasts for a few minutes, and is used to make sure they can be safely intubated (tube into trachea) so they can be placed on ventilator to breathe for them.

A good chunk of the 19th century anesthesia hadn’t even been invented or widely used for anyone, let alone babies.