Anesthesizer
Anesthesizers are machines which assist with the administration of general anesthesia to a patient. Recently devised for public use, they resurrect a common Old World procedure and have made it available to the most elite and technologically-advanced hospitals in Canada and Middle America.
Most anesthesizers use a chemical compound such as ether to achieve their effects, namely putting the patient safely to sleep in an unconscious state (in which they are unable to feel pain) so that surgical operations may proceed. (Anesthetics, known since the Old World, are still used by many doctors without the benefit of these machines, though this is much more fraught with difficulties and all but rules out complex, hours-long, surgical operations.) The machines themselves are usually about the size of a small filing cabinet, able to be fitted into a rolling cart or transported in the back of a wagon, and are typically constructed from brass or other metals. (Plastic manufacture having mostly vanished with the depletion of oil.) Some internal components require flexible tubing, electric motors, and control circuits, which makes them extraordinarily expensive and delayed their (re)invention until Canadian industry advanced to the point where it could make these parts.
These machines are typically operated by a dedicated doctor ("anesthesiologist") and team of technicians acting under the lead surgeon. Their operation requires careful training and the most delicate of control, since any mistake risks giving the patient so great a dose of the anesthetizing compound that they die, or so little they awaken with their insides cut open.
Only a relative few hospitals in Canada and Middle America have these machines. Their great cost precludes most from affording them, and those that do often take out loans and insurance policies lest the expense prove ruinous. Not surprisingly, their presence often correlates with that of political and economic elites, being found in hospitals in capitals of rich nations or major trade hubs.
Most anesthesizers use a chemical compound such as ether to achieve their effects, namely putting the patient safely to sleep in an unconscious state (in which they are unable to feel pain) so that surgical operations may proceed. (Anesthetics, known since the Old World, are still used by many doctors without the benefit of these machines, though this is much more fraught with difficulties and all but rules out complex, hours-long, surgical operations.) The machines themselves are usually about the size of a small filing cabinet, able to be fitted into a rolling cart or transported in the back of a wagon, and are typically constructed from brass or other metals. (Plastic manufacture having mostly vanished with the depletion of oil.) Some internal components require flexible tubing, electric motors, and control circuits, which makes them extraordinarily expensive and delayed their (re)invention until Canadian industry advanced to the point where it could make these parts.
These machines are typically operated by a dedicated doctor ("anesthesiologist") and team of technicians acting under the lead surgeon. Their operation requires careful training and the most delicate of control, since any mistake risks giving the patient so great a dose of the anesthetizing compound that they die, or so little they awaken with their insides cut open.
Only a relative few hospitals in Canada and Middle America have these machines. Their great cost precludes most from affording them, and those that do often take out loans and insurance policies lest the expense prove ruinous. Not surprisingly, their presence often correlates with that of political and economic elites, being found in hospitals in capitals of rich nations or major trade hubs.
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