Shortly after the news of the discovery of ether reached London, the People's Journal trumpeted, "We have conquered pain."41 A few months later, however, a fifteen-year-old girl named Hannah Greener died after receiving chloroform for a routine toenail operation. Doctors soon realized that the weapons with which they sought to free their patients from pain could kill the very people they sought to help.

New drugs and new techniques have improved the effectiveness of anesthesia but also have multiplied the risks. As a result, anesthesiologists have fought a constant battle to minimize those risks. "Patient safety is not a fad," says Ellison C. Pierce of Harvard Medical School. "Patient safety is an ongoing necessity. And it must be constantly sustained by research, training, and daily application in the workplace."42

Many of the dangers of undergoing anesthesia have nothing to do with the drugs themselves nor with...