The development of inhalation anaesthesia : with special reference to the years 1846-1900... / [Barbara M. Duncum].
- Duncum, Barbara M.
- Date:
- 1947
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The development of inhalation anaesthesia : with special reference to the years 1846-1900... / [Barbara M. Duncum]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
377/664 page 357
![' The fact that nitrous oxide must be administered pure indicates that in order to be absorbed by the organism in sufficient quantity, the tension of the gas must be equal to one atmosphere. In order to achieve this at normal pressure, the gas must be in the proportion of 100 per cent. But let us suppose that the patient is placed in an apparatus where the pressure can be increased to two* atmospheres ; then one could submit him to the desired tension by making him inhale a mixture of 50 per cent, nitrous oxide with 50 per cent. air. Thus one could achieve anaesthesia while maintaining the normal quantity of oxygen in the blood, and it follows that the normal conditions of respiration would be preserved. ' This is what, in fact, has been done ; but I must add that up to the present I have experimented only upon animals.' After giving details of these experiments Bert concluded : ' I now feel justified by the results of my experiments on animals, in most strongly recommending to surgeons the use of nitrous oxide under pressure in order to obtain an anaesthesia of long duration. . . . ' I see only one difficulty—the apparatus necessary for ad- ministering nitrous oxide under pressure. I realize that this is an insuperable obstacle for military surgeons and for country practitioners. But most large towns, and it is there that almost all major operations are performed, have [therapeutic] establish- ments which specialize in compressed air bathing. The install- ation of a chamber to accommodate, besides the patient and the operator, some dozen assistants, would not cost more than 10,000 francs, a trifling expenditure in hospital administration. ' There are, also, minor difficulties the solution of which rests with the surgeons ; it is up to them to solve all the many questions of detail which the application of a new therapeutic agent always raises. For my part it must suffice that I, as a physiologist, have drawn attention to this agent, have shown the immense advantages of its use and have stressed, among other things, its remarkable, yet easily explicable, safety.'1 If existing compressed air chambers were to be used it was unavoidable that not only the patient but also the surgeon and his assistants must equally be submitted to increased atmospheric pressure. Nevertheless by July 1879 Bert was able to state at a meeting of the Academie des Sciences : ' Two surgeons from Parisian hospitals, MM. Labbe and Pean, have responded to the appeal I made to practitioners. ... As a 1 C.R. Acad. ScL, Paris, 1878, 87, 728-30.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0381.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
