In an article from the Atlantic last January, Joshua Lang wrote a wonderful article about the challenge of deciding whether surgical anesthesia actually makes people unconscious, or whether people remember parts of their surgery and are traumatized by them later. In the article, he quotes George Wilson, a Scottish chemist who had his foot amputated in 1843, long before the existence of anesthesia. Wilson’s description of his surgical experience is visceral:
Of the agony it occasioned I will say nothing. Suffering so great as I underwent cannot be expressed in words, and fortunately cannot be recalled. The particular pangs are now forgotten, but the blank whirlwind of emotion, the horror of great darkness, and the sense of desertion by God and man, bordering close upon despair, which swept through my mind and overwhelms my heart, I can never forget, however gladly I would do so.
Anyone reading that amazing paragraph should have a glimpse of why post-traumatic stress disorder is such a serious problem. Memories can torture.