传播缓慢的思想

Why do some innovations spread so swiftly and others so slowly? Consider the very different trajectories of surgical anesthesia and antiseptics, both of which were discovered in the nineteenth century. The first public demonstration of anesthesia was in 1846. The Boston surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow was approached by a local dentist named William Morton, who insisted that he had found a gas that could render patients insensible to the pain of surgery. That was a dramatic claim. In those days, even a minor tooth extraction was excruciating. Without effective pain control, surgeons learned to work with slashing speed. Attendants pinned patients down as they screamed and thrashed, until they fainted from the agony. Nothing ever tried had made much difference. Nonetheless, Bigelow agreed to let Morton demonstrate his claim.

为什么有些创新传播得如此迅速，而另一些则如此缓慢？考虑一下手术麻醉和防腐剂的截然不同的发展轨迹，两者都是在19世纪发现的。麻醉的首次公开演示是在1846年。波士顿外科医生亨利-雅各布-比格洛(Henry Jacob Bigelow)被当地一位名叫威廉-莫顿(William Morton)的牙医找到，他坚持说他已经找到一种气体，可以使病人对手术的痛苦失去知觉。这是一个戏剧性的说法。在那些日子里，即使是轻微的拔牙也是非常痛苦的。由于没有有效的疼痛控制，外科医生学会了以惊人的速度工作。在病人尖叫和挣扎时，护理人员将他们按倒在地，直到他们因痛苦而晕倒。曾经尝试过的任何方法都没有太大的作用。尽管如此，毕格罗同意让莫顿展示他的主张。

We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way that norms and standards change.Illustration by Harry Campbell

我们渴望着无摩擦的技术解决方案。但人与人之间的对话仍然是规范和标准改变的方式。

On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Morton administered his gas through an inhaler in the mouth of a young man undergoing the excision of a tumor in his jaw. The patient only muttered to himself in a semi-conscious state during the procedure. The following day, the gas left a woman, undergoing surgery to cut a large tumor from her upper arm, completely silent and motionless. When she woke, she said she had experienced nothing at all.

1846年10月16日，在马萨诸塞州综合医院，莫顿通过一个吸入器在一个正在接受下巴肿瘤切除手术的年轻人口中注入他的气体。在手术过程中，病人只是在半昏迷的状态下喃喃自语。第二天，该气体使一名正在接受手术切除上臂大肿瘤的妇女完全沉默，一动不动。当她醒来时，她说她根本没有经历什么。

Four weeks later, on November 18th, Bigelow published his report on the discovery of “insensibility prod...