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.
444/664 page 424
![firmer as my experience has grown longer. During thirty-five years I have administered, or rather have had administered on my responsibility, 40,000 anaesthetics (comprising all cases in my department carried out by my deputies, assistants, heads of clinics or house officers)—though this figure is an under-estima- tion—. . . and I have not had a single death during anaesthesia or a post-operative death which could be directly laid at the door of the anaesthetic itself. ... Of this number ... six or seven hundred cases at the most, have been anaesthetized with chloro- form. Although I have not actually had a death among these last-mentioned cases, yet I have had occasion to fear for the lives of several patients and the alarms have been more frequent and more acute than has been proportionately the case with ether. . . .' Speaking of the technique of administration used for ether Oilier continued : ' If one seeks to put the patient to sleep rapidly with ether by completely preventing the admixture of fresh air with the vapour, one is liable to have accidents. ... I have never used the specialized and more or less complicated types of inhaler. . . . I always use Jules Roux's sac [see Fig. 24], which is simply a pig's bladder in a cloth envelope with an opening in the lower back part, closed with a stopper, for pouring in the ether. This is the apparatus which has been used for more than 40 years in the hospitals of Lyons. . . . Where there is a fear of carrying infection, I use a pig's bladder tobacco pouch, such as one finds cheaply everywhere, which is used only once.' Oilier differed from Chaput and his two associates in having no fear that ether would adversely affect the lungs. He con- sidered that, other things being equal, ether was less dangerous than chloroform even in cases where a lesion of the thoracic organs existed and might be expected to influence the patient's condition. But he made an exception to this general rule in cases where the reaction of the trachea or bronchi to the irritant effects of ether was very pronounced.1 This discussion was continued during subsequent meetings of the Society, and in the course of it another Lyonnais, Poncet, stated that he also used a Roux's sac, but of a type in which bladder and envelope could be separated and sterilized. His personal experience of ether anaesthesia extended to 25,000 cases, but he did not use it exclusively, preferring chloroform for children and for bronchitics. 1 Bull. Soc. Chirurgie Paris, 1895, 2I> 380-3.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0448.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
