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.
538/664 page 518
![Prochownick's apparatus consisted of a cylinder of oxygen mounted on a mobile stand, rubber tubing and a facepiece and, its most important features, a reducing valve and manometers for quickly and easily regulating the pressure of the gas reaching the patient. Prochownick stated that, as a rule, he gave the oxygen towards the end of anaesthesia at a pressure of one- quarter to one-third of an atmosphere, but in difficult and protracted operations the pressure might be increased from one-third to one-half an atmosphere.1 In adapting Prochownick's apparatus Wohlgemuth simply added a chloroform reservoir from which the liquid was dropped into a U-tube in the path of the gas. As he did not also add a reservoir bag, however, whenever the patient breathed deeply the supply of anaesthetic mixture available in the narrow tubing of the apparatus must have become temporarily exhausted (see Fig. 147). This difficulty was overcome by Roth, of the Liibeck General Hospital, who, in 1902, substituted a chloroform bottle for Wohlgemuth's dropping device, and allowed the oxygen to bubble through the liquid. The resulting mixture passed into a small reservoir bag from which the patient was able to draw an adequate supply, even during deep respiration. This apparatus was manufactured by the Liibeck firm of Drager.2 In America the administration of oxygen with ether began to attract widespread attention about 1898, the method having been under clinical observation in certain hospitals, notably in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, for more than two years. Thomas S. K. Morton for example, President of the Philadelphia College of Physicians, told a meeting of his colleagues in 1898 ' that he had been using oxygen and ether for inducing anaesthesia since December 1895, with increasing confidence and satisfaction. His cases now numbered in the hundreds, with but a single accident '. The apparatus used by Morton consisted ' of a small wrought- iron tank containing 40 gallons of oxygen gas under pressure, a two-quart pressure-equalizing rubber bag, and a wash-bottle [containing ether] and rubber tubing, connecting with any suitable [valved] inhaling mask. . . . The amount of ether 1 Munch, med. Wschr., 1895, 42> 72I~3- 2 Dumont, F. L. 1903. Handbuch der allgemeinen und lokalen Anaesthesie. Berlin and Vienna. 141-9-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0542.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
