There is “versed” in “She is well versed in Roman history.”
And then there’s “Versed,” which a medical friend told me yesterday, is known as the anesthesiologist’s friend. E.g., suppose someone wakes up during their abdominal surgery. Not a nice thing. However, a quick shot of Versed removes the memory, along with sending them back to sleep.
I knew of the possibility of Versed through philosophical thought experiments, but I experienced the use of it recently, as reported here.
The thought experiment: How do you know you weren’t awake for the whole awful operation but just paralyzed and then given a drug which removed the memory of it? It turns out this is technically possible.
Feminist Philosophers 
I’ve actually had this medication 3 times in my life. No memory-no pain. It doesn’t matter. I have no recollection of the awful painful procedures I experienced so it’s as if it never happened.
I worked in a hospital pharmacy for several years while in college, and versed was a very commonly used drug. It’s related to Valium, but, as you note, it mostly makes people not lay down memories. It’s used for all sorts of things- colonoscopy, some sorts of surgery, major dental work, etc. An odd aspect is that it often makes people babble away while they are on it. I’m told that the subject of their babbling is often enough their sex lives, but the only time I’ve been on it (having my wisdom teeth taken out) I, of course, don’t remember, and probably no one could understand anyway. (I do vaguely remember leaving the medical room, and sitting in the waiting room, and then being home. Wife wife tells me that I sat there for about a half hour, mouth full of gauze, blood and spit dripping down my chin, yammering away in a way that was completely not understandable. Probably for the best. It’s interesting stuff, especially when you know that, for major surgery, one of the things people usually are given is a drug that paralyzes them but don’t stop pain, so that they don’t jerk around.
” It’s interesting stuff, especially when you know that, for major surgery, one of the things people usually are given is a drug that paralyzes them but don’t stop pain, so that they don’t jerk around.”
Umm, are they also generally given something that stops pain?
Umm, are they also generally given something that stops pain?
Yes- narcotics, usually, or sometimes stuff that knocks you out generally (I forget what’s used for that these days, as “general anesthesia” wasn’t our main area, as some of it is done via gas.) But the paralyzing drugs are important, too, as otherwise people sometimes twitch, or worse, and that’s bad when you’re being cut open. But the good philosophy thought experiment is what to think about a mix of paralyzing drugs and versed. (Even thinking about the difference in mechanism between different types of things taken for pain can be interesting- narcotics just have completely different sorts of effects from local numbing agents, and from things like ibuprofen, and so on.)
Jender, I doubt many anesthesiologists would say they are just paralyzed. Versed is supposed to help in the cases when the patient starts to become conscious.
There used to be a terrible practice of just paralyzing infants. Seriously. It was not clear to the doctors that infants feel pain (!!) and an infant who needs surgery is probably endangered by a general anesthetic. The story is too awful, but the practice only just recently was ended. In the 1970’s-80’s.
For whatever it’s worth, some people who have had Versed–and I am one of them–feel that the drug has unfortunate long-lasting side effects: your brain doesn’t lay down memories efficiently for some time after the procedure is over. And by “some time,” I mean as long as a year.
I have no proof, of course, that Versed has been the cause of this problem for me, but the fact that other people say they’ve had this experience too is suggestive. I consider persistent fuzzy recall an unacceptable after-effect, and have since started opting out of Versed whenever it might be on offer. For instance, I recently had a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy with no Versed. The procedures themselves were very uncomfortable, even with Fentanyl (a synthetic morphine), but I had no lasting mental effects whatsoever. As trade-offs go, this one was totally worth it.
In short, Versed sucks.