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60 free Anesthesia trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This anesthesia trivia quiz covers the science and the surprisingly dramatic history of putting people painlessly to sleep. The easy questions are the ones any curious patient can answer: the three broad types of anesthesia, the gas that makes you laugh, the drug that made Michael Jackson's death infamous and where an epidural goes. From there it moves into the history, from opium poppies in Sumer and the medieval sleep sponge to Humphry Davy's self-experiments and the Japanese surgeon who beat the West to general anesthesia by forty years. The harder end is for medical students and pub-quiz specialists: Crawford Long's unpublished ether operations, Horace Wells's failed demonstration, Morton's Letheon patent, the surgeon who declared it no humbug, who coined the word anesthesia, chloroform for Queen Victoria, the Vienna school and cocaine, lidocaine's original name, curare's 1942 debut, the drug that treats malignant hyperthermia, ASA scores, how often patients dream under anesthesia and the Mother of Anesthesia who kept records of 14,000 cases. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for anesthesia, its drugs and its pioneers before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our human body, medical history and famous scientists quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What are the three broad categories of anesthesia?
General, sedation and regional or local
General anesthesia produces unconsciousness; sedation dampens anxiety and memory; regional and local block nerves in one part of the body.
Q 02What are the three basic goals or endpoints of anesthesia?
Hypnosis, analgesia and muscle relaxation
In a pharmacological context hypnosis means a temporary loss of consciousness and memory.
Q 03Roughly what proportion of patients experience anesthesia awareness under general anesthesia?
1 or 2 in 1,000
An estimated 22% of people dream under general anesthesia.
Q 04What percentage of people are estimated to dream while under general anesthesia?
22%
It is not known whether animals dream under anesthesia.
Q 05The potency of an inhaled anesthetic correlates with its solubility in what?
Oil
The drugs bind directly to cavities in proteins of the central nervous system.
Q 06Which decade saw physicians begin combining inhaled anesthetics with intravenous ones?
The 1930s
Combinations gave a better risk profile and quicker recovery, and lower odds of dying in the first seven days.
Q 07Which US body sets minimum monitoring standards such as ECG during anesthesia?
The American Society of Anesthesiologists
In the UK the Association of Anaesthetists sets the equivalent guidelines.
Q 08What is sedation with benzodiazepines commonly nicknamed?
Twilight anesthesia
Benzodiazepines are usually given with painkillers because they do not relieve pain themselves.
Q 09Where is a spinal anesthetic injected?
Into the subarachnoid space
Epidural anesthesia is injected outside the subarachnoid space and typically does not affect muscle control.
Q 10Why does a spinal or epidural block commonly cause a drop in blood pressure?
It causes arterial and venous vasodilation
The venous side of the circulation holds 75% of circulating blood volume, so the effect is large.
Q 11An ASA physical status score of 3, 4 or 5 raises the risk of death how much compared with a score of 1 or 2?
About 10.7 times
Being aged 60 to 79 raises risk 2.3 times compared with under-60s.
Q 12What is the immediate period after anesthesia, when the patient wakes, called?
Emergence
Nausea and vomiting occur in about 9.8% of cases at this stage.
Q 13What is the main cause of postoperative cognitive dysfunction after cardiac surgery?
Formation of microemboli
Long-term POCD can last weeks or months and often shows as loss of interest in crosswords and hobbies.
Q 21Who performed the first successful surgery under general anesthesia, in Japan on 14 November 1804?
Hanaoka Seishu
His herbal formula tsusensan combined Korean morning glory with other herbs, but Japan's isolation kept it unknown abroad.
Q 22What operation did the Japanese anesthesia pioneer perform over 150 times before dying in 1835?
Breast cancer surgery
Sawako Ariyoshi's novel The Doctor's Wife dramatises his life.
Q 23Which Georgia doctor removed a tumor under ether on 30 March 1842 but did not publish until 1849?
Crawford Long
His patient James Venable had attended one of the era's ether frolics; US Doctors' Day is 30 March in his honour.
Q 14Which ancient people are said to have cultivated the opium poppy as early as 3400 BCE?
The Sumerians
Alcohol is one of the oldest known sedatives, used in ancient Mesopotamia.
Q 15Which Chinese physician is considered the first verifiable historical figure to develop an anaesthetic?
Hua Tuo
His recipe has never been fully rediscovered.
Q 16What did Inca shamans chew and spit into skull wounds to numb them?
Coca leaves
Cocaine, isolated later, became the first effective local anesthetic.
Q 17What was the medieval soporific sponge soaked in?
Opium, mandragora and hemlock juice
Dried and stored, it was moistened before surgery and held under the patient's nose.
Q 18Which 16th-century physician noted that chickens breathing ether fell asleep and felt no pain?
Paracelsus
Ether may have been synthesised as early as the 8th century, but was long used only recreationally.
Q 19Who discovered nitrous oxide in 1772?
Joseph Priestley
People initially thought the gas was lethal even in small doses.
Q 20Which chemist experimented on himself with Priestley's gas and nicknamed it in 1799?
Humphry Davy
In 1800 he wrote about its potential to relieve surgical pain, but nobody followed up.
Q 24Which dentist's 1845 demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital failed when the patient cried out?
Horace Wells
He had first seen laughing gas at a Grand Exhibition by Gardner Quincy Colton in Hartford in December 1844.
Q 25Who gave the first successful public demonstration of ether anesthesia on 16 October 1846?
William T. G. Morton
He was a Boston dentist unaware of Long's earlier work.
Q 26What did surgeon John Collins Warren reportedly say after the first ether operation?
Gentlemen, this is no humbug
He had removed a tumor from the neck of printer Edward Gilbert Abbott.
Q 27What name did Morton use to disguise his anesthetic when he patented it?
Letheon
News of the successful anesthetic spread quickly anyway by late 1846.
Q 28What is the Massachusetts General Hospital operating theatre where the 1846 demonstration took place called?
The Ether Dome
It is in the hospital's Bulfinch Building in Boston.
Q 29Who proposed the words anesthesia and anesthetic in an 1846 letter?
Oliver Wendell Holmes
He suggested anesthesia for the state and anesthetic for the agent.
Q 30Which Scottish obstetrician first demonstrated the anesthetic properties of chloroform on humans in 1847?
James Young Simpson
By 1895 Britain was using 750,000 doses a week.