The development of inhalation anaesthesia : with special reference to the years 1846-1900... / [Barbara M. Duncum].

Duncum, Barbara M.

Date:: 1947

Credit: The development of inhalation anaesthesia : with special reference to the years 1846-1900... / [Barbara M. Duncum]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

410/664 page 390

$belladonna are mutually remedial, when either of the two has entered the circulation in a poisonous dose. The earliest step towards this opinion appears to have been a suggestion thrown out about twenty years ago, by Dr. Corrigan of Dublin, while attending along with the late Dr. Graves, a case of typhus fever. . . . During the course of the illness . . . [the patient's] head became greatly implicated, with a remarkable contraction of the pupil. Tartar emetic with opium . . . was prescribed, but without good effect, and the patient died. Dr. Corrigan sug- gested, during . . . subsequent conversation, that, under similar circumstances, narcotics which produce dilatation of the pupil might be beneficial. The observation struck Dr. Graves as being curious and important, and ... he determined to put it to the test of experiment on the first favourable opportunity. ' The result of his various observations and experiments seemed to be this—that the internal use of belladonna is a valuable remedy in cases of cerebral excitement coming in the course of fever, when there is a marked tendency to that very unfavourable symptom contraction of the pupil ; and that, under such circum- stances, opium in every shape, is injurious. . . . [See Dublin J. Med. Sci., 1838, 13, 351.] ' In the winter of 1853, Dr. Thomas Anderson . . . was engaged in a series of experiments on the therapeutic action of belladonna, and having satisfied himself, by repeated clinical observation, of the soundness of the opinions entertained by Dr. Graves, he went a step further, and conceived the idea, that belladonna might perhaps be found beneficial in relieving the coma with contracted pupils caused by poisoning with opium, and a favourable opportunity having soon occurred, he submitted his hypothesis to the test of experiment . . . [and succeeded in reviving a patient]. Another step in advance is taken by Dr. Garrod, who, in . . . October 1854, hazarded the suggestion, that . . . probably in poisoning by belladonna, opium may be found advantageous.' From the experience gained in two cases of atropine poison- ing occurring in his own practice Bell declared, ' I am quite satisfied . . . that the injection of morphia had a powerful effect in modifying and controlling the poisonous influence of the atropia. I have had no opportunity, in the human subject, of putting the converse doctrine regarding morphia, to the test of experimenthe added, ' but [on] the evidence of facts already brought together in support of it ... I should con- fidently have recourse to the injection of atropia in a suitable case of poisoning with opium or any of its preparations \1 1 Edinb. med. J., 1858-9, N.S. 4, 1.$