At some point in adult medicine, it was recognized that using an analgesic during surgery, in addition to the then normal combination of paralytic and hypnotic, significantly increased survival rates. This fact was independent of the patients capacity to remember the pain and wasn't any kind of psychological response like PTSD. It was the basal reaction to injury and pain by stress that killed those patients.
The exact same reaction kills non-adults. The proof took longer, but it is there now. That doctors even needed proof instead of, without further experimental knowledge, assuming the null hypothesis of children being small adults in this case already is proof of a kind of chauvinistic barbarism. Infants were some kind of lesser human to them, thus couldn't react in the same way as adults.
Remember, the norm was _no_ analgesia, _no_ pain relief. For the majority of infants. Its not that they decided on a case by case basis on the right balance of analgesia vs. risk. They decided as a matter of course that analgesia was superfluous for infants.
The exact same reaction kills non-adults. The proof took longer, but it is there now. That doctors even needed proof instead of, without further experimental knowledge, assuming the null hypothesis of children being small adults in this case already is proof of a kind of chauvinistic barbarism. Infants were some kind of lesser human to them, thus couldn't react in the same way as adults.
Remember, the norm was _no_ analgesia, _no_ pain relief. For the majority of infants. Its not that they decided on a case by case basis on the right balance of analgesia vs. risk. They decided as a matter of course that analgesia was superfluous for infants.