Richard Holmes, in his book Age of Wonder, describes how the young scientist Humphry Davy hoped to seek a cure for tuberculosis. Looking to improve respiration, he tried inhaling a variety of different gases, eventually making his way to nitrous oxide. Laughing gas.

The nitrous oxide failed to have an impact on the health of his lungs, but Davy did notice, during one experiment, that a toothache he was suffering from subsided whilst he was under the effects of the gas. So he wrote a short article for his scientific peers suggesting that nitrous oxide might be useful to people undergoing surgery.

Now here’s the thing.

In 1799 there was no word for ‘anesthesia’. They were not saying that word yet, had not invented it yet, because they were not thinking it. The thoughts ‘pain-free’ and ‘surgery’ had not been linked together yet. What was being thought was something that now appears quite startling – shocking? crazy? – that pain in surgery was a good thing. Pain, in the thinking of the day, had benefits for both surgeon – the screaming encouraged them to cut fast and accurately – and for the patient – post-surgery pain, writes Holmes “was proof that the body was fighting back and healing itself.”

It took another 40 years before science expanded its thinking to move the thought ‘pain-free surgery’ out of the realms of mockery, through possibility, into normal, everyday practice.

I tell my clients that work and suffering need not be linked. I hope they don’t take 40 years to believe me.