A developmental history of local anaesthesia

For thousands of years doctors have searched for a drug that could eliminate or at least ease the pain of surgery. Though the coca plant was well-known for more than 3000 years, it was not until the middle of the 18th century that the initial isolation of the organic base responsible for its extraordinary properties, cocaine, was accomplished. To the ophthalmologist Carl Koller goes the credit for the discovery of cocaine as a local anaesthetic. Since then, surgeons from all surgical fields adapted the newly discovered anaesthetic to all sorts of novel and complicated surgical interventions. Ambulatory surgery has benefited greatly from this development. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.