Can you imagine life before anesthesia?

I've been a regular at the dentist lately.
3 fillings last week.  
2 fillings this week. 
Lots of anesthesia.

It's been a relatively painless experience, but what if I was transported back in time?  

Let's say 1840 in Boston.

"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." - NewYorker

I can't really imagine what an amputation would have been like.  Luckily, things changed.

"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." - NewYorker

By December, anesthesia had spread to Paris and London.
By February, it was available in all major European capitals
By June, it was available in most regions around the world.

That's fast.  That's also before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

Why did it move so fast while other ideas move so slow?  

It cured a very visible problem (people screaming, doctors slashing, nurses holding down patients).  
It's also why it's taking longer to fix global warming or hunger in countries where we don't reside.