Hypodermic needles and syringes–those things scare me and I try to avoid them at all cost. But I doubt that there is scarcely a nurse on this planet who hasn’t stuck one of those pointy things into a defenseless patient at least once during the course of her career.

But I bet that hardly anyone knows (or cares) that on March 12, 1845, Irish physician Francis Rynd published his account of how he used a hypodermic syringe to inject fluids into a patient at Dublin’s Meath Hospital. The beginning of a new era of pain, and well, also tremendous progress in medicine. Now medicines could be given which circumvented the digestive tract and got into the blood stream more quickly.

From the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia:

In 1845, the Irish surgeon Francis Rynd (1801-1861) became the first to introduce a fluid subcutaneously. In order to treat a patient with trigeminal neuralgia, Rynd developed a special instrument which could inject a morphine solution beneath the skin: “On the 3rd of June a solution of fifteen grains of acetate of morphia, dissolved in one drachm of creosote, was introduced to the supra-orbital nerve, and along the course of the temporal, malar, and buccal nerves, by four punctures of an instrument made for the purpose.”

Rynd published his results in the Dublin Medical Press, and it would still be a while before intramuscular injections were introduced. Still, this was quite a milestone in medicine and healthcare.