anesthesia

Meaning

Noun

• 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.

Related

Narrower meaning words

• general anesthesia
• local anesthesia

Origin

• an- + aesthesia, from Ancient Greek ἀναισθησία, from ἀν- with αἴσθησις.
• Coined in 1846 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.