A history of anesthesia in China

Abstract

Peter Parker introduced ether anesthesia into China on 4 October 1847, using an apparatus supplied by Charles Jackson. A year later, he used chloroform after reading a pamphlet written by James Simpson. Open-drop ether or chloroform, and local and spinal anesthesia were used in China up to the mid-20th century. Physicians, students, nurses, nuns, and technicians'but few professional anesthesiologists'delivered clinical anesthesia. The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 after the devastation of World War II and the civil war. Jone Wu and Xingfang Li from Shanghai and Deyan Shang, Rong Xie and Huiying Tan from Beijing then returned from the US and Europe, bringing back modern ideas concerning anesthetic delivery. In 1953, Rong Xie organized the first training course in anesthesiology, sponsored by the Peking Union Medical College and Beijing Medical Universities. Development of anesthesiology as a specialty, and the establishment of training programs began in the 1950s, aided by publication of two books,Clinical Anesthesiology by Jone Wu, and Anesthesiology by Rong Xie. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), research and funding were interrupted, and patient care switched to acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. Although the above techniques were later abandoned because of their poor performance on their own, acupuncture continued in use as a supplement to anesthesia and analgesia. At the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution, a few pain management programs and post-anesthesia care units and intensive care units were established. In 1979, 44 anesthesiologists were elected as inaugural members of the Chinese Society of Anesthesiology (CSA). TheChinese Journal of Anesthesiology (1981),Foreign Medical Sciences (Anesthesiology and Resuscitation; 1982), and The Journal of Clinical Anesthesiology (1983) began their publication.