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.
587/664 page 567
![colour, became suddenly blanched, and she spluttered at the mouth, as if in epilepsy. I threw down the handkerchief, dashed cold water in her face, and gave her some internally, followed by brandy, without, however, the least effect, not the slightest attempt at a rally being made. We laid her on the floor, opened a vein in her arm, and the jugular vein, but no blood flowed. The whole process of inhalation, operation, venesection, and death, could not, I should say, have occupied more than two minutes.' Case 2 happened in Cincinnati in February 1848, and the victim was a healthy, thirty-five-year-old woman. Chloroform was administered to her by two unqualified dentists from a Morton's ether globe (see Fig. 12) : ' The dentists gave nearly the same account, saying that the breathing was at first slow, and that the patient inhaled twelve or fifteen times, occupying from a minute to seventy-five seconds. They committed the great error of not placing the patient at once in the horizontal position, when the alarming symptoms came on, but kept her sitting in the chair, from five to ten minutes, whilst they sent out for restoratives. They thought the patient was living during this time, but her female friends [who were present] thought not. The patient was placed on a sofa, and sometime afterwards artificial respiration and galvanism were applied without effect.' Case 4 happened at Boulogne in May 1848 ; the operation was the opening of a sinus in the thigh and the patient was a woman of thirty. She was given chloroform on a handkerchief ' placed over the nostrils ' by the surgeon performing the operation : ' M. Gorre . . . expressed the opinion afterwards that death had already taken place when he made the incision. Amongst the means used, with a view to resuscitate the patient, was inflation of the lungs, which was performed with such force as to produce permanent dilatation of the air-cells f1].' In case g, at the Hotel-Dieu, at Lyons, in January 1849, the patient was a seventeen-year-old boy who was to have a finger amputated. Chloroform was administered on £ a piece of fine gauze '. 1 Leroy warned against this type of accident in 1827, and suggested intermittent pressure on the chest and abdomen instead of the use of bellows. (Journal de Physiologie expe'rimentale, 1828, 8, 97-135.)](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0595.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
