On this day – 27 December
Posted on: Fri 27 Dec 2019
Medical advances and anti-alcohol rage occurred on this day in history.
Dr Crawford Williamson Long had used ether for anaesthesia in several of the surgeries he had performed. Finally, he introduced this technique to his obstetrics practice in the delivery of his own child on 27 December, 1845. This was the first ever anaesthesia for childbirth.
Kansas passed prohibition laws in 1880, though bars continued to sell alcohol illegally. On 27 December 1900, passionate alcohol prohibitionist Carrie Nation decided to take the law into her own hands by breaking each and every one of the liquor bottles of a saloon at a hotel in Wichita, KS. Nation became obsessed about prohibition after the death of her first husband from alcohol-related illness, calling those who drank, “Rum-soaked, whiskey-swilled, saturn-faced rummies.”
Produced by Zoe Kounadis
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
