If you have ever had surgery to remove your tonsils or wisdom teeth, you probably have had an anesthetic. You barely felt anything. You may even have slept through the event. Be glad that you live at a time when anesthetics are available. The first anesthetics were not very strong and did not work well. Surgery was painful and rare. Many potions and herbs were tried before Joseph Priestly discovered nitrous oxide. Humphry Davy, while working with the gas, found that it worked to eliminate pain for a time. Doctors and dentists used nitrous oxide for years. Then William Morton and others experimented with ether, a gas that was safer and more effective. By the early 1900s, ether was largely replaced by chloroform. As anesthetics improved, more complex surgeries became possible. Today, a variety of anesthetics are available. Some are inhaled, and some are injected. Rather than knocking a patient out for hours, anesthesiologists may now put them slightly under, eliminating pain for the surgical process and waking them as it ends. To summarize, ______.
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