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.
390/664 page 370
![years ago by the late Mr. J. T. Clover f1]. . . The proportion of chloroform-vapour to air was slightly less in the older English than in the new French apparatus ; but chloroform has, for some nine or ten years past, been practically superseded here by other still safer anaesthetising agents, such as nitrous oxide gas, ether, or the mixture of alcohol, chloroform, and ether. Of the advantages possessed by these anaesthetic agents in many cases over chloroform, however skilfully and exactly it may be adminis- tered, our French neighbours may (if they travel at M. Bert's rate of progress) possibly become aware at the dawn of the twentieth century.' 2 During 1884 and 1885 the physiologist Raphael Dubois and an engineer named Tatin worked under Bert's supervision on an apparatus for delivering measured mixtures of chloroform and air, the clinical tests being made by Dubois during operations performed in Pean's department at the Hopital Saint-Louis. In all, about 200 administrations were made, for a variety of operative procedures, and the patients' ages ranged from six months to sixty years.3 In laboratory experiments and in the first twenty-two or so clinical tests Saint-Martin's gasometer had proved reliable in delivering a single, constant mixture composed of 8 grams of chloroform vaporized in 100 litres of air. Bert soon aimed, however, at being able to vary the mixture easily during the course of the administration so as to have 1 o grams of chloroform vaporized in 100 litres of air for induction and from 8 to 6 grams of chloroform vaporized in 100 litres of air for maintaining anaesthesia. ' In order to be able to dispense with the need for assistants and avoid the possibility of error ', it was necessary to design an apparatus to deliver these mixtures automatically. The ' anaesthetizing machine ' which Raphael Dubois designed for this purpose was worked by a handle. A measured volume of air was drawn into the apparatus by a pump and passed through a warmed evaporating chamber into which, simultaneously, a measured quantity of liquid chloroform was injected from a reservoir, by the stroke of a piston. The resulting chloroform-air mixture, after accumulating in the pump body, was blown through a long rubber tube to a valveless facepiece. So long as the handle was steadily turned this process was con- tinuously repeated and the anaesthetic mixture was delivered at 1 Clover died in 1882. 2 Brit. med. J., 1884, i, 281. 3 Rev. gin. Sci. pur. appl., 1891, 2, 360.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0394.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
