Major surgery is not a pretty sight to be sure. However, I am truly thankful for the wonders of modern medicine. I have several family members and close friends with serious disability or health conditions that would not be alive today without first-rate healthcare, highly qualified professionals and high tech equipment that makes all the difference between life and death.

We tend to forget that many procedures performed routinely nowadays were either uknown or technically impossible just a few decades (or maybe even years) ago. What was state-of-the art medicine in 1900 would be considered barbaric today. And if you think modern battlefield surgery borders on torture, imagine how you would feel about a field hospital of the Napoleonic era for instance.

I agree that sometimes modern medicine tends to prolong life even when rationally speaking, it might be better to let nature take its course. On the other hand, it's also true that we are wired as human beings to cling to our earthly existence for as long as possible. I don't think you can really appreciate life until you're on the brink of losing it.

And of course, procedures change, usually for the better, through time. Case in point. my traditional open heart procedure (which I tend to refer to as "Aztec sacrificial cardiology") is being replaced by less disruptive procedures with incisions through the chest wall or even introducing the new valve at the femoral artery. Apparently the results are good, with less stress for the patient.

I was never offered any photos of my appearance on the operating table, although I imagine it both very unusual and not very pretty, like a good many procedures. So what? The end results are what count.....After all, I am a happy camper - my new heart valve came with a lifetime warranty.

Did you fill out the warranty card? I can never decide... It seems like just a way for corporations to collect information on us.

So true, in a very specific and literary sense, that it is faboulus hillarious! Or is it the other way around? My lifetime ends with the hearth valve warranty...

Back on topic: You may be surprised to find that both modern medicine and medievial torture has the very best intentions for the long term velvare of the patient (deliquent)? The difference is that modern medicine tries its very best to save the earthly flesh, whereas medieval torture does the exactly oposite. The idea is that your body is just a disposable, short-lived container of not much interest anyway -- what matters is the choices affecting your eternal afterlife. Confess your sins, and your soul may be saved from eternal damnation. So the torturer is in fact doing you a favour!

And if an innocent person is wrongfully subject to such treatment... well, the innocent goes straight to heaven anyway, a little torture is just a way to speed up the process. The phrase "patient consent" does strike me at somewhat relevant in this context...

I think it's being overly charitable to say that torture was generally undertaken for the good of the victim's soul. And since modern surgery techniques are designed to fix the body, not the soul, I think you're comparing apples to blood oranges.

Hmm, perhaps I am still too vague in my assertion. Let me try again.

It is not the outcome that I am drawing a comparison on, it is the activity.

In Napoleonic and even American Civil War era medical practice, there were a lot of prospective patients that flatly refused treatment even in the face of probable death without it rather than succumb to the conventional remedies of the time, such as amputation of an injured limb to better control profuse bleeding and/or risk of infection.

Could we imagine going through open-heart surgery without anesthesia? Who would be willing to endure such an experience fully conscious and able to feel every slice and tug? At the time you are about to go through such an event, would you consider refusing the procedure? Would you be able to even lay there unrestrained and let them do what they need to do to you?

Yes, intent is a fundamental difference, but has absolutely nothing to do with the experience of the recipient. Without the anesthesia, there is no physical difference in the sensation, the fear, or the physical trauma inflicted, other than the surgeon will have a more aesthetically acceptable technique.

If faced with a choice of going through such an experience and dying, or not going through such an experience and dying, what is the sane conclusion? Twould be consterning for one in their youth/prime to face such a dilemma, not so much for one who feels they have already lived a full and satisfying life.

A quote I often cite: "Everybody gotta die sometime, Red."

I think I get your point, and can relate to it to some extent. However...

Before the introduction of chloroform the best/only widely available kind of anesthesia was hard liquor, which was used very commonly. Unfortunately, it's not particularly effective for the purpose and hence many advanced surgical procedures were either extremely painful or impossible to pull off with any chance of success.

I don't think you can perform open-heart surgery or anything like it without proper anesthesia and life support equipment in the first place, neither of which existed in 19th century. Even today, no military field hospital with limited equipment and supplies could do that sort of thing, it requires top notch medical facilities.

However, if you do have the privilege of modern healthcare at hand I think it would be pretty hardcore to deliberately turn down say, open-heart surgery that could save your life simply because you can't bear the pain (which you're not going to feel anyway) of the operation being performed on you while you're out cold.

YMMV for sure, I have no axe to grind one way or another. But this much I know - most people are willing to take far greater pain and risk for the chance of living a little longer.

Except intent has everything to do with this comparison. Modern medicine has identified the brain and its effect on the body as being a physical system. Intent would affect how a person copes with the immediate physical trauma of surgery versus torture. Intent would also affect the brain's ability to heal the physical body afterward.

Somebody has to do this, and so I guess I will... The main difference between rape and consensual sex is intent. Oftentimes there is no difference in the immediate physical trauma inflicted. Because of intent, rape is extremely damaging (mentally and thus physically), while consensual sex is typically healthy.

That drives home the fact that anesthesia is an epic game changer! That's one of the reasons surgery and torture are so different. Antibiotics is another.

I don't see a proper comparison here. Coitus, whether willing or not, cannot compare to evisceration, willing or not. Without anesthesia, going through the act of evisceration, whether well intended or not, cannot be a sanely enjoyable experience (perhaps a masochistic mind could find ecstasy from such an undertaking, but we are not talking aberrations here). It is only through the application of anesthesia of sufficient potency that any invasive surgical application can be tolerated by the recipient, and no amount of consent on the part of the recipient or the provider can mitigate the physical trauma experienced by a normal person.

Further extension of the point would, by way of experience, indicate that a heightened level of pre-surgical anxiety is a common among many patients. Could this anxiety approach levels of those about to experience torture? It would seem a common practice to administer pre-surgical tranquilizers to make the practice routine. There is no doubt that the psyche is well aware of what is pending, and survival instincts will activate.

So if intent is not the inducement to the anxiety and fear so many patients experience prior to surgery, as no reasonable doctor intends to inflict suffering on their client, then what must we conclude about the cause of this aversion, even when we know it is for our own good? It is because we are aware of the risks, and we are aware of the pending trauma our bodies are about to go through, even though we will be rendered virtually unconscious and will have no memory of the event in any case. So many times, I have seen patients in prep tremble uncontrollably, right up until the nurse sticks the hypo into the IV and administers the "joy juice" as some of them call it. The purpose: to calm them down and help them deal with the anxiety. Imagine what effect such a thing would have on someone facing torture.

So intent is not a factor. Normal people don't consent to trauma without motivation, that being to endure for the chance at improved health. Who would rationally submit to any surgical procedure that was not deemed necessary? We do not need our appendix for anything, so why not line up to get them removed? We all face the risk of eventually developing appendicitis, and at a time and place that may preclude other remedies besides emergency surgery, so why not make it preventive care?

Ah, but isn't cosmetic surgery elective for the vast majority? Well, that is mitigated by other motivations, with perceived benefits. As before, normal people do not consent to trauma without motivation, and some feel that cosmetic surgery can lead to an improved quality of life. Ok, but they still require anesthesia for the operation, and many still need the pre-op tranq to deal with the anxiety.

So it would seem the similarities of torture to modern medicine, as we have all now had a hand in defining the parametric comparisons and exclusions, remains conclusive. Without the anesthesia, the experiences would be similarly miserable, and neither intent nor desire would have any differing effect on the endurability of either.

This thread reminds me of the scene from the movie Monty Python's the Meaning of Life, where the non-doctors have come to collect the liver from a man who filled out a donor card. Well intended fellows I suppose.