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.
432/664 page 412
![This International Congress of Medicine held in Berlin in 1890 forms, in the history of anaesthesia, a parallel to the Inter- national Ophthalmological Congress held in London in 1872 ; for the Congress in 1890 helped to bring about a general revival of the use of ether in Germany as the Congress in 1872 had done in England. Again it was an American, this time Professor Horatio Wood, of Philadelphia, who by reading a paper on anaesthesia set the train of events in motion. ' The most brilliant modern achievements in the direct saving of life by the science of medicine are connected ', he said, ' with surgery. These great achievements have been rendered possible by two epoch-making discoveries, Antisepsis and Anaesthesia. . . . Antisepsis has outgrown the dangers of its youth, and to-day the measures that are meant to save, very rarely kill. On the other hand, the death-roll of anaesthesia is daily added to ; added to, according to my belief, at a rate that has not changed in forty years. . . .' After referring at some length to the results of his own and other current researches upon the physiological effects of nitrous oxide, chloroform, and ether, with particular reference to the circulatory system, Wood proceeded to stress the superiority of ether over chloroform from the point of view of the safety of the patient. Apart from mentioning O. H. Allis's inhaler (see Figs. 98- 101) as being preferable to the folded towel and sponge, Wood did not concern himself greatly with methods of administration although the use of ether was unfamiliar to a number of his audience. In support of his argument that ether was com- paratively safer than chloroform, he quoted statistics : 6 It seems to me impossible ', said Wood, ' to get at the exact number of anaesthetic deaths, or the proportionate fatality of ether and chloroform. Lyman [American] considers that in regard to chloroform the ratio of deaths to inhalations is 1 in 5860 ; Richardson [English], that it is 1 in 2500 to 3000. Andrews [American] puts it for ether, at 1 in 23,204 ; and Lyman at 1 in 16,543.; ' Without claiming strict accuracy for any of these figures, I think that it can be asserted that the probable ratio of deaths from chloroform is four or five times that of deaths from ether.' 1 Earlier in the same year (April 1890), during the Nineteenth Congress of the German Surgical Society in Berlin, Oscar](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0436.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
