The induction of sleep and insensibility to pain by the safe self-administration of anaesthetics / by John M. Crombie.

  • Crombie, John Mann, 1844-1883.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The induction of sleep and insensibility to pain by the safe self-administration of anaesthetics / by John M. Crombie. 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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    turn their faces to the inhaler, and a mechanism is provided | for them by which, at their own will, they can supply them- selves with enough of the anaesthetic, but cannot possibly do more. It was shown that the safeguard lay in the nature of ^ the physiological process controlling sleep through chloro- form whereby the administration is ruled, inasmuch as it is ^ impossible for one who has gone to sleep to execute move- ments which sleep suspends. On the continuance of the ' movements the supply of chloroform depends; on their cessation it is cut off. In consequence of this, chloroform so administered not only loses its danger but becomes the most trustworthy, the safest, ^ and the best remedy for acute and severe pain or sleeplessness. ^ The danger of opium, morphia, or chloral self-administered is not less than that of the reckless administration of chloro- ; form. An overdose of any of these is quite as fatal, but, ^ unlike chloroform, they do not present by their ordinary modes j of administration the same facility for exact adaptation to the j amount just sufficient for each case. Some time must elapse j before it is known what effect a given dose of any solid or | liquid narcotic so introduced into the system will produce. Consequently from too small a dose sometimes there is only additional restlessness brought about, sometimes only stupe- ■ faction, not sleep ; sometimes, from too large a dose, the sleep may extend over many many hours, and the waking state remain for some time after a condition only of pitiable som- nolence. In the story of human misery much may be com- j pressed into a single sentence, and the above is an example, ] as many must know. With the inhalent narcotics, on the other hand, the tendency to sleep is developed pari passu with the inhalation, and so admits of being checked as soon as the desired result is obtained, d'his makes them the most effective narcotics, because the speediest, and the safest because the most physiologically measureable. There is also an additional advantage necessarily flowing from this. For, in many cases of extreme restlessness and sleeplessness arising from anxiety and watchfulness, an exceedingly small quantity of chloroform is enough to bring on sleep, which is, so to speak, only waiting to be wooed. It needs only to be