Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

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.

Not arguing that some procedures were done without appropriate analgesia, but the image of surgeons operating on babies who are paralyzed but conscious isn’t accurate from my understanding of medical history.

Any... sources?

Bumping into a lot of paywalls... sounds like there were some instances of it from the Times article, but lots of evidence that peds anesthesia was flourishing by the early 1900s, and paralytics not even invented until post WWII.