On the remedial agency of a local anaesthetic or benumbing temperature, in various painful and imflammatory [i.e. inflammatory] diseases / by James Arnott.

  • Arnott, James Moncrieff, 1794-1885.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the remedial agency of a local anaesthetic or benumbing temperature, in various painful and imflammatory [i.e. inflammatory] diseases / by James Arnott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    INTRODUCTORY NOTICE, It is the purpose of the following pages to place before the public, more methodically and completely than has as yet been done, an account of a physical agent which constitutes both a powerful remedy in many important diseases, and a safer mode than any hitherto in use of producing insensibility in surgical operations. This agent is severe cold, produced by the local application of frigorific mixtures, (as of ice and various salts) which, in dissolving, reduce the temperature to 30 or 40 degrees below the freezing point of water; or to such a degree as will immediately benumb the part to which the mixture is applied, arrest the circulation of blood through it, and even congeal the fluids contained within it. There are other important but more concealed effects of severe cold or congelation connected with its medical virtues, which will be noticed hereafter. The first and principal section of this little work relates to the treatment of headach by congelation. The reason why this is now more minutely described than the treatment of other diseases by the same means, will be afterwards explained. The next article contained in this publication, is on the treatment of erysipelas by congelation. For this common and dangerous disease, there has hitherto been no remedy in which any confidence could be placed. I am certain that much suffer, ing and many lives will be saved by the adoption of that which is here recommended. In the third and concluding part, the comparative advantages of severe cold as an anaesthetic are considered, as well as its