Todas as semanas reveja uma personalidade que por motivos muito diversos está ligada à História da Anestesia. Esta semana, o escolhido é Fanny Burney…

 Fanny Burney nasceu em 13 de junho de 1752. Na sua infância conviveu com a melhor sociedade londrina onde estava perfeitamente integrada. Durante 5 anos (1786-1791), trabalhou na corte de George III e da rainha Charlotte.
Destacou-se como romancista tendo publicado vários livros célebres: “Evelina”, “The History of A Young Lady´s Entrance into the World”.
Em 1793 Fanny Burney casou com Alexandre Jean Baptiste Piochard d´Arblay, general do exército de Luís VI.
Em 1802 Fanny e a sua família foram viver para França durante 10 anos. É neste período, mais concretamente em 30 de setembro de 1811, que é sujeita a mastectomia direita por suspeita de carcinoma da mama. Durante a cirurgia, recusou qualquer fármaco ou álcool!… 9 meses depois escreve uma carta a sua irmã Esther descrevendo os horrores da cirurgia sem anestesia…
“A doctor gives her a wine cordial, the only anesthetic she receives. Waiting for all the doctors to arrive causes her agony, but at three o’clock, “my room, without previous message, was entered by 7 Men in black”.
When the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast—cutting through veins, arteries, flesh, nerves—I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision—& I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still! so excruciating was the agony. When the wound was made, & the instrument was withdrawn, the pain seemed undiminished, for the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp & forked poniards, that were tearing the edges of the wound— but when again I felt the instrument—describing a curve—cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose & tire the hand of the operator, who was forced to change from the right to the left—then, indeed, I thought I must have expired.
I attempted no more to open my Eyes, —they felt as if hermetically shut, & so firmly closed, that the Eyelids seemed indented into the Cheeks. The instrument this second time withdrawn, I concluded the operation over—Oh no! presently the  terrible cutting was renewed—& worse than ever, to separate the bottom, the foundation of this dreadful gland from the parts to which it adhered—Again all description would be baffled—yet again all was not over,—Dr Larry rested but his own hand, &—Oh Heaven!—I then felt the Knife tackling against the breast bone—scraping it! …not for days, not for Weeks, but for Months I could not speak of this terrible business without nearly again going through it! I could not think of it with impunity! …& this miserable account, which I began 3 Months ago, at least, I dare not revise, nor read, the recollection is still so painful.”
O relatório médico da operação refere que foram necessárias 3 horas e 45 minutos para remover a mama direita…
Fanny Burney viveu mais 29 anos. É impossível determinar se o seu tumor era realmente maligno…
Este pequeno texto revela a importância que a Anestesia trouxe para o desenvolvimento da cirurgia ao permitir hoje em dia todo o tipo de intervenções cirúrgicas sem qualquer sofrimento para o doente.

Na próxima semana, descubra porque é que… Edward Squibb, mereceu as honras de ser nomeado por este “site”!