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What do anaesthetists do? How does anaesthesia work? What are the risks? Anaesthesia is a mysterious and sometimes threatening process. We spoke to anaesthetist and author Aidan O’Donnell, who addresses some of the common myths and thoughts surrounding anaesthesia.

On the science of anaesthesia:

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The pros and cons of pain relief in childbirth:

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Are anaesthetists heroes?

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Aidan O’Donnell is a consultant anaesthetist and medical writer with a special interest in anaesthesia for childbirth. He graduated from Edinburgh in 1996 and trained in Scotland and New Zealand. He now lives and works in New Zealand. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists in 2002 and a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists in 2011. Anaesthesia: A Very Short Introduction is his first book. You can also read his blog post Propofol and the Death of Michael Jackson.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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This Day in World History

December 3, 1967

Barnard performs first heart transplant

For five hours, the thirty-person surgical team worked in an operating room in Cape Town, South Africa. The head surgeon, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, was leading the team into uncharted territory, transplanting the heart of a young woman killed in a car accident into the chest of 55-year-old Louis Washkansky.  As the operation neared to a close, Barnard used electrodes to stimulate the heart. It began pumping, and the team knew they had succeeded. The operation was not the first organ transplant—kidney transplants had been performed for more than ten years. In transplanting the heart, though, Barnard pushed medicine into a new phase.

“On Saturday,” Barnard remembered later, “I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday I was world-renowned.” The recipient, 55-year-old Louis Washkansky, lived only eighteen days after the surgery before dying of pneumonia. Nevertheless, Barnard had revolutionized cardiac care. The surgeon improved his heart transplant techniques over the years such that some patients lived for several years after surgery. He also experimented with new techniques, including using artificial heart valves and using hearts from monkeys as a stopgap measure for some patients.

Along with his medical breakthroughs, Barnard challenged social conventions. His second heart transplant roused controversy in his native land because the recipient was white and the donor was “coloured”—the term under South Africa’s apartheid system for a person of mixed white and black ancestry. Over the years, Barnard became more outspoken about the rights of black South Africans, putting his reputation behind the end of apartheid. He also became somewhat controversial for his obvious enjoyment of his celebrity status and for, late in life, trying to find ways to reverse aging.

Barnard will be most remembered, though, as a bold surgeon looking to expand the boundaries of medicine.

“This Day in World History” is brought to you by USA Higher Education.
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Cover illustration for the Dutch medical magazine Arts en Auto, about so-called serious games that allow apprentice surgeons to practice their future tasks.

More at www.sevensheaven.nl

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Ammon Shea recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, has been published by Perigee, so go check it out in your local bookstore. In the post below Ammon looks for help finding the etymology of the word “gossypiboma”.

On the web site that I recently put up I’ve included my email address, along with the exhortation for anyone who cares to write me with any questions they have about obscure words. I am not any more qualified to answer such questions than most people, and I am certainly less qualified than any lexicographer would be, but that doesn’t stop people from asking questions, or me from attempting to answer them. In some cases it’s seemed that someone will write me with a question because they were too lazy to look it up in the dictionary themselves. I’m always happy to drop whatever I’m supposed to be doing to go look something up in a dictionary, so I do not mind these questions at all, even if they accomplish little, aside of helping me waste some time.

However, this morning I received a question from a surgeon that accomplished two things: it confused me greatly and it reinforced the exceptionally negative view I have of doctors. The letter-writer wanted to know more information about the word gossypiboma (which she then helpfully defined as the word for a retained surgical sponge - “a memento that we surgeons sometimes accidentally leave behind to commemorate our presence in some poor patient’s abdomen.”)

According to the letter writer the word has been in use since the 1970s, and has a wonderfully mulish pedigree (from a mixture of Latin and either Swahili or Maasai).

I have not seen it in any dictionaries, and don’t know when it will work its way in. And so I’ve decided to ask the question myself, through this blog, if anyone has any more information about this wonderfully horrible word.

Has anyone seen it in a dictionary? Or has anyone a certain etymology? Or has anyone had a sponge left inside of them and then had the doctors who left it explain that gossypiboma is the term for what just befell them, followed by a scholarly explanation of how the word came about?

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