[remote_phone]

As recently as the 1980s, they would do heart surgery on newborns because the surgeons felt that the babies wouldn’t remember anything about it. It sounds monstrous to me, however.

[ars]

That's not why they did it. They did it because anesthesia wasn't as good then, and there were significant risks to the infants.

When the risk of pain outweighed the risk of anesthesia the practice stopped.