When a Simple Blue Light Was the Hot New Anaesthetic in Dentistry
Photo showing Dr. Redard with a patient trying out his new form of anaesthesia (Technical World)
Swiss doctor Camille Redard received worldwide press in 1905 after he announced a new anaesthetic for dental surgery that was supposed to make everything completely painless. The good doctor simply put a powerful blue light over the patient’s head, wrapped in a dark fabric. And it aroused “considerable interest” in the medical community. Unfortunately, it didn’t work on everyone, as some doctors reported back at the time.
“Teeth Extracted Without Pain,” one magazine from 1905 proclaimed, saying it had been achieved by Dr. Redard after “extensive experiments.”
And as the February 1906 issue of Technical World magazine explained:
Doctor Redard claims that after the patient has attentively fixed his eyes on the blue rays for two or three minutes he will become unconscious, after which a small surgical operation—such, for example, as the removal of a tooth—can be performed without causing the patient the slightest pain.
The awakening from the effects of the rays is quite gradual, and no dangerous or even unpleasant symptoms are noticed.
The magazine even explained how it was done, presumably just in case any dentists were paying attention and wanted to try it out for themselves.
Experiments have shown that green and violet rays produce somewhat the same effect as the blue, but not to the same extent.
The blue light—a 16-candle-powcr incandescent, with a blue bulb, is effective and easily obtainable—should be held about six inches from the patient's eyes.
The magazine even included photos of Dr. Redard and his patient before he put the veil with the blue light over their head.
Photo showing Dr. Redard with a patient trying out his new form of anaesthesia (Technical World)
But you might be thinking to yourself: How would this even work? And I’m right there with you. After finding this article, I went searching and found a letter to the editor in the June 24, 1905 issue of the British Medical Journal which reported very mixed results.
Following M. Redard’s plan I have out of a total of 32 cases had 20 absolutely successful results, eight failures and four cases in which the patients stated that they felt pain and yet showed no sign of doing so beyond “screwing up” their eyes during the operation.
Amazingly, the doctor, Harvey Hillaird of London Hospital, seemed to believe it was the fault of the patients that this weird new technique didn’t work properly.
Most of the failures can, I think, be explained on the grounds that the patients were highly nervous, that they had while waiting their turn been told by others that some new experiment was being tried, and that they did not carry out my directions and keep their eyes fixed upon the light. The remainder may be explained, perhaps, by the fact that a different reflector was used, whereby the rays were not concentrated upon the patients’ eyes, but were more widely diffused.
You win some, you lose some, I guess whenever you’re trying out wild new experiments with your patients.
To confuse things even more, some newspaper articles from the time seem to say Redard’s patients were not made unconscious through his technique, while others say they were.
As I’ve written before, you couldn’t pay me any amount of money to go back in time and experience the horrors of dentistry before the most modern technology. But if you know anything about the history of anaesthesia please let us know what’s going on here. Is it possible to cause pain relief of some kind with an intense blue light? And if not, what was going on here?
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