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Heresy

The End of Suffering

Pleasure for the People! Katherine Power considers whether there should be more opiates for the masses (including opium?), but settles for nuts and seeds.

Before anaesthesia, surgery used to be agony. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could have been anything but pleased when painless surgery was introduced in the mid-19th century. And yet, although many welcomed anaesthesia, some did object. In Zurich, anaesthesia was even outlawed. “Pain is a natural and intended curse of the primal sin.

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