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After major natural disasters, responders sometimes rush to bury bodies because they fear epidemics. But people killed by trauma generally pose little epidemic risk unless they died from certain infectious diseases. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, public-health experts warned that exaggerated fears could distract from more urgent needs such as clean water, sanitation and care for survivors.

In the early 1900s, some hospitals offered women a technique called twilight sleep. Drugs made mothers forget much of childbirth without reliably removing the pain itself. Women could become agitated and were sometimes restrained. The drugs could also suppress a newborn’s breathing. Forgetting pain was mistaken for relief from it.