Surgeries were commonly performed on infants without anesthesia due to the belief they could not feel pain
Historical medical practices frequently involved performing surgeries on infants with minimal or no anesthesia, driven by the erroneous belief that infants could not feel pain or lacked mature pain perception.
The claim is a specific, empirical historical fact that is well-supported by historical analyses of medical practice showing that infants routinely underwent surgery with inadequate anesthesia until relatively recently due to widespread skepticism about infant pain perception.
Ruth Eckstein Grunau. Personal perspectives: Infant pain—A multidisciplinary journey. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/pne2.12017
Notes that historical assumptions erroneously held that newborns were insensitive to pain.
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Yogesh Pehlajani, Kailash Chandra Gupta, Soniya Bokade. Postoperative Pain Management in Neonatal Surgery: Evaluating the Role of Multimodal Analgesia. 2025. https://doi.org/10.52783/jns.v14.1811
Acknowledges that historically neonates were undertreated for pain due to various past medical assumptions and challenges.
Elissa N Rodkey, Rebecca Pillai Riddell. The infancy of infant pain research: the experimental origins of infant pain denial.. 2013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2012.12.017
Explores the historical perspective of infant pain denial, confirming that infant surgeries were routinely conducted with minimal or no anesthesia into the 1980s based on the belief that infants lacked mature pain perception.
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