[Report in regard to the discovery of anaesthesia].

  • United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Anaesthesia.
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Report in regard to the discovery of anaesthesia]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    9/42 (page 9)
    method analogous to that of Theodoric, and specifies five cases in which he succeeded in performing painless operations. The success of the modern revival of this ancient anassthetic agent, appears to have been about equal to that of Dr. Wells with the nitrous oxyd. M. Dauriol says he appUed it successfully and specifies five cases in which he performed operations with- out pain, and it may be reasonably inferred, without previous mental preparation. Dr. Wells performed an operation, that of extracting a tooth or teeth, on ten or fifteen persons as he says, but the first and only exhibition he made of it out of his own town was a failure, and brought him and his nostrum into ridi- cule. He certainly did no more in 1844 to prove the utility of nitrous oxyd as an angesthetic agent, than Dauroil had done lor the spongia somnifera in 1832. Nor did he do more to advance the general idea of anEesthesia, or to commend it to the favorable notice of the medical faculty. Nor did M. Dauriol stand alone in this department of medical science : English use of Gases to produce insensibility in 1828. September 23,1828, M. Girardin read a letter before the Acad- emy of Medicine, addressed to his Majesty Charles X., by Mr. Hickman, a surgeon of London, in which this surgeon announces a means of performing the most delicate and most dangerous ope- rations without producing pain in the individuals submitted to them. This proceeding consists in suspending insensibility by the methodical introduction of certain gases into the lungs. Mr. Hick man had tested his proceedings by repeatefl experiments on animals. But neither of their discoveries met with any considerable suc- cess. Neither was acknowledged or adopted by the medical pro- fession, though both had formed a distinct conception of ances/he- sia, and both of them attained that end by means good and satisfactory to themselves, though not to the medical profession. Other anaesthetic agents have been tried, with some success, but never brought into general use, nor obtained the approval of an enlightened medical faculty. Haller, Deneux, and Blandin, report cases of operations per- formed upon patients under the influence of alcholic intoxication, in obstetric and other cases, without pain ; and Richerand has sug- gested that this expedient should be employed in the management of dislocations difficult to be reduced. For obvious reasons it has not been adopted by the profession. Mesmerism, also, has been the subject of grave discussions, and of some extraordinary statements, in this connection ; but, whatever may be thought of the individual cases certified by witnesses, it is not too much to say that it is not likely ever to become a remedy of general ap- plication.