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.
570/664 page 550
![anaesthetics. But as the administration of anaesthetics is part of the duty of a qualified f1] man, it is clear that the unqualified administrator is liable to the penalties imposed by the Medical, Dentists and Apothecaries Acts on unqualified persons provided the case falls within the four corners of any of their Acts. These Acts do not directly forbid the general administration of anaesthetics. . . . Reform is necessary, not only to prevent quacks practising as doctors, but to prevent unqualified persons administering anaesthetics and other dangerous drugs. It is anomalous and absurd that this should not be a specific offence when the sale of poisons is prohibited to a certain extent.' 2 Although from the legal point of view the liabilities of the administrator of an anaesthetic were not clearly defined,3 from the medical point of view they were very definite and were categorically stated in a leader in the Lancet. ■ The person who undertakes the control of the anaesthetic is responsible for the safety of the patient. It has been held by persons of great weight in the profession that the real person who bears the burden of the responsibility is the surgeon who operates. . . . But the responsibility of the actual conduct of the administration of the anaesthetic must in every case rest with the person whose allotted task it is to devote himself to it. The surgeon may be highly reprehensible if he permits a novice to undertake the administration of ether or chloroform, but the person giving the drug cannot be screened from his act by the surgeon. . . . The person who gives an anaesthetic, unless he be a student who does it under the eye of his teacher, who then assumes the responsibility must always be a duly qualified medical practitioner. It may be urged that many ward orderlies or nurses are far more experienced than newly qualified men, but even were this so it is no valid reason for permitting unqualified persons to undertake the functions of medical practitioners. ' More than one action for damage has been brought against medical men who have lost patients under chloroform, and in such cases the only possible defence can be that everything was done for the unhappy patient which experience and skill could effect. Thus the fact must not be blinked that both from the point of view of medical ethics . . . and from the purely legal 1 Turner stated that the term ' qualified ' included registered dentists, physicians, and surgeons. 2 Practitioner, 1896, 57, 398-400. 3 These liabilities are still not clearly defined, cf. Macintosh, R. R., and Bannister, F. B. 1943. Essentials of general anaesthesia. Oxford. 322-3.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0578.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
