For a long time, surgical operations were performed without anesthesia, and patients had to endure unbearable pain while doctors returned them to normal life. This situation persisted until the 1880s.

During this period, a young Russian doctor, Vasily Konstantinovich Anrep, studying pharmacology, accidentally noticed a side effect of cocaine. In his experiments, he discovered that in small doses, this drug causes loss of sensitivity in nerve endings that usually react sharply to pain. Anrep decided to focus on this discovery and developed an experimental analgesic.

Vasily Konstantinovich conducted his first experiments on frogs. After confirming the correctness of his theory, he decided to test the new anesthetic on himself. After administering a small dose, he described his sensations: "the prick of a needle is not felt, only as a light touch, and burning with a match does not cause pain."

Anrep published his observations in the scientific journal "Archiv Pflüger" in 1879, but the article did not attract much interest among his colleagues. His research was revisited only five years later.

In 1884, Austrian doctor Karl Koller conducted similar experiments and announced at a scientific congress that he had developed a drug for local anesthesia. His discovery quickly attracted the attention of European specialists. Later, Vasily Konstantinovich managed to prove that he invented the drug before Koller’s research, and he was recognized as the "pioneer of local anesthesia."

In Russia, one of the first to apply the new method was ophthalmologist Ivan Nikolaevich Katsaurov in his complex operations. For example, he removed a piece of metal from the cornea of the eye. By the end of the 19th century, Anrep's drug became one of the main means of anesthesia in complex surgeries. Later, it was replaced by novocaine, but that is another story.