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.
389/664 page 369
![Bert, in replying to his critics, and more especially to Richet, said : ' Many people . . . oppressed by their responsibility, have tried to regulate the amount of chloroform with the aid of various pieces of apparatus ; but these apparatuses have been abandoned for the good reason that they were all founded upon the erroneous principle of measuring the amount of chloroform used instead of the true principle—the measuring of the tension of the vapour. . . ' I have the temerity to say that it is not an apparatus but a new method which I am putting forward. My aim is to regulate and maintain constant in the system the quantity of chloroform necessary for anaesthesia and I am able to do so by causing the chloroform to be breathed at the necessary tension. . . . ' Thus the use of measured mixtures has the precision which gives security and the adaptability which will lend itself to all eventualities. One . . . can change the proportions and one can, obviously, administer intermittently if one wishes. What the method will not do is to allow danger to arise through the use of too strong doses. At one sure stroke, and mechanically, it achieves what the ablest practitioners search after and obtain only at the price of long and often painful experience. . . . ' Our learned colleague, M. Richet, must let me thank him for having drawn my attention to Clover's apparatus. I admit it was unknown to me. . . . ' The examination which I have made showed me at once that its inventor was not directed by the theoretical ideas which led me to propose my methods of anaesthesia by nitrous oxide, chloroform and ether. ' But since the measured mixtures used by Clover are analog- ous to mine, but a little weaker (30 to 40 minims in 1000 cubic inches is from 5 to 7 grams in 100 litres of air) I must try the method which has given such excellent results in thousands of cases.' 1 Bert was criticized also in the British Medical Journal in an editorial note headed ' A rediscovery in anaesthetics ' : ' M. Paul Bert has been making experiments in anaesthesia with a mixture of chloroform-vapour and air. . . . He used an anaesthetic vapour composed of eight grammes of chloroform volatilized in 100 litres of air, and claims several advantages for this new method. ... It will be at once evident that M. Gambetta's ex-minister [2] has been travelling over exactly the same ground as that which was completely explored fully five-and-twenty 1 C.R. Acad. Sci., Paris, 1884, 98, 265-72. 2 Bert was a professional politician as well as a physiologist.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0393.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
