anesthesia
See also: anesthésia
English
Alternative forms
- anaesthesia (British)
- anæsthesia (obsolete)
Etymology
an- + aesthesia, from Ancient Greek ἀναισθησία (anaisthēsía), from ἀν- (an-, “not”) with αἴσθησις (aísthēsis, “sensation”).
Coined in 1846 CE by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in a letter to dentist William T. G. Morton, the first practitioner to publicly demonstrate the use of ether during surgery, writing:
- Everybody wants to have a hand in a great discovery. All I will do is to give a hint or two as to names—or the name—to be applied to the state produced and the agent. The state should, I think, be called ‘Anaesthesia.’ This signifies insensibility—more particularly ... to objects of touch.[1]
Noun
anesthesia (countable and uncountable, plural anesthesias)
- (American spelling, medicine) An artificial method of preventing sensation, used to eliminate pain without causing loss of vital functions, by the administration of one or more agents which block pain impulses before transmitted to the brain.
- The loss or prevention of sensation, as caused by anesthesia, lesion in the nervous system or other physical abnormality.
- 1902', William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 4 & 5:
- In some individuals optimism may become quasi-pathological. The capacity for even a transient sadness or a momentary humility seems cut off from them as by a kind of congenital anæsthesia.
- 1902', William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 4 & 5:
Hyponyms
- general anesthesia
- local anesthesia
Related terms
Translations
loss of bodily sensation
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general anesthesia — see general anesthesia
Further reading
anesthesia on Wikipedia.Wikipedia anesthesia on the Simple English Wikipedia.Wikipedia simple
References
- Small, Miriam Rossiter (1962). Oliver Wendell Homes. Twayne’s United States authors series, 29. New York: Twayne Publishers. OCLC 273508, page 55
Anagrams
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