In addition to relieving patient suffering, anaesthesia allowed more intricate operations in the internal regions of the human body. In addition, the discovery of muscle relaxants such as curare allowed for safer applications. Infection and antisepsis
Unfortunately, the introduction of anesthetics encouraged more surgery, which inadvertently caused more dangerous patient post-operative infections. The concept of infection was unknown until relatively modern times. The first progress in combating infection was made in 1847 by the Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis who noticed that medical students fresh from the dissecting room were causing excess maternal death compared to midwives. Semmelweis, despite ridicule and opposition, introduced compulsory handwashing for everyone entering the maternal wards and was rewarded with a plunge in maternal and fetal deaths; however, the Royal Society dismissed his advice. Until the pioneering work of British surgeon Joseph Lister in the 1860s, most medical men believed that chemical damage from exposures to bad air (see "miasma") was responsible for infections in wounds, and facilities for washing hands or a patients wounds were not available. Lister became aware of the work of French chemist Louis Pasteur, who showed that rotting and fermentation could occur under anaerobic conditions if micro-organisms were present. Pasteur suggested three methods to eliminate the micro-organisms responsible for gangrene: filtration, exposure to heat, or exposure to chemical solutions. Lister confirmed Pasteurs conclusions with his own experiments and decided to use his findings to develop antiseptic techniques for wounds.
This term fell out of use in the early 20th century, and the symptoms it referred to are now thought to have been caused mainly by various minor viral respiratory infections. Society and culture
Mythology
Febris (fever in Latin) is the goddess of fever  in Roman mythology. People with fevers would visit her temples. Tertiana and Quartana are the goddesses of tertian and quartan fevers of malaria in Roman mythology. Jvarasura (fever-demon in Hindi) is the personification of fever and disease in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. Paediatrics
Fever is often viewed with greater concern by parents and healthcare professionals than might be deserved, a phenomenon known as fever phobia, which is based in both caregivers and parents misconceptions about fever in children. Among them, many parents incorrectly believe that fever is a disease rather than a medical sign, that even low fevers are harmful, and that any temperature even briefly or slightly above the oversimplified "normal" number marked on a thermometer is a clinically significant fever. They are also afraid of harmless side effects like febrile seizures and dramatically overestimate the likelihood of permanent damage from typical fevers. The underlying problem, according to professor of pediatrics Barton D. Schmitt, is that "as parents we tend to suspect that our childrens brains may melt." As a result of these misconceptions parents are anxious, give the child fever-reducing medicine when the temperature is technically normal or only slightly elevated, and interfere with the childs sleep to give the child more medicine.