Anaesthesia in dental surgery / by Thomas D. Luke.

  • Luke, Thomas D. (Thomas Davey)
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anaesthesia in dental surgery / by Thomas D. Luke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Nitrous oxide and oxygen anesthesia has ac- quired during the war an importance and a degree of general recognition which was anticipated only by those few who in this country and the U.S.A. had been working for some years to perfect its administration. Briefly put, its advantages over other anesthetics are as follows: (a) It protects the patient from surgical shock much more effectively than does any other anes- thetic. (b) It is non-toxic. The patient recovers in a few minutes from the longest inhalation, with his tissues and his metabolic processes unaffected by the drug. He can take full nourishment from the very inception of his convalescence. All this is in strong contrast with ether and chloroform, after either of which he has to pass through a period of depression and nausea, etc. On the other side of the account, we must admit that the method is costly and the apparatus cumbersome and, in its most highly developed forms, almost immobile. These factors have not in this war, however, prevented a wide use of the method, which has been of untold help to great numbers of our men, particularly those most severely wounded and most heavily infected with sepsis. To say that all this does not concern the dental surgeon in his