Surgical experience of chloroform / By James Miller.

  • James Miller
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical experience of chloroform / By James Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/62 (page 53)
    tion was that of horror, at the sight of such a huge instrument being tenus capulo within him ; and he stared at it incredu¬ lously. Afterwards, the emotion was that of extreme thank¬ fulness that such good progress had already been made, and that without pain or suffering of any kind. The instrument was allowed to remain for about half an hour. No bad con¬ sequence occurred at the time ; but, in the evening, there was some fever, and a threatening of retention : both yielded to the warm bath. Eight or ten repetitions of the bougie were made at proper intervals, under chloroform; until No. 9 passed freely. Then typhus fever occurred, unfortunately; and during its tedious progress, all instrumentation w^as of course abandoned. Convalescence having been completed, however, the bougie was taken up again ; and now No. 6 passed readily enough, without chloroform. The spasm and the irritability had been broken up and subdued. And the case then pro¬ gressed in the ordinary way. XXX [. ANESTHESIA RENDERS THE OPERATION OF SOUNDING SAFER FOR BOTH PATIENT AND SURGEON. All surgeons are familiar with the fact, that simple as this manipulation seems, yet it is in itself not free from hazard to life. From it, alone, patients have perished ; by a cystitis, by suppression of urine, by fever, or otherwise. Surgeons are as familiar with the equally painful fact, that they are liable to be deceived in the results of the operation, and to fall into sad disaster in consequence. In short, many a surgeon has thought he felt a stone, when in reality he did not; and stoneless lithotomies have followed. This untoward event has been especially frequent in children; and the reason is obvious. So restless and so noisy do they prove under the operation, that both hand and ear have great difficulty in saving themselves from erroneous perception, in regard to sound and touch elicited through the sound. Now, with chloroform, the patient—whatever his age or timidity, how'- ever irritable and sensitive his bladder, however protracted