The olden times were worse!

Prior to the discovery of anesthesia, surgery was a most traumatic experience; patients were fully conscious throughout procedures. Kipling made reference to this pain in his novel “The Light that Failed” when he coined the phrase “biting the bullet”. It is easy to understand why people avoided surgery and allowed the injury and/or disease to fester rather than undergo surgery. Why anyone would subject themselves to experience the worst pain of their life at an operating theatre in front of hundreds of medical students, e.g., surgical demonstrations at Massachusetts General Hospital prior to the discovery of anesthesia, is difficult to comprehend. But somehow patients did endure. Perhaps the only saving grace of such an ordeal is that some tissues in our bodies lack somatic pain sensations. In the following image, which areas lack somatic pain fibers?

Postscript: Even if one survived the surgery, it is estimated that 25% of patients would develop infections from their procedure and die.

Tissue where somatic pain is not felt?