Anaesthesia, or the employment of chloroform and ether in surgery, midwifery, etc. / by J.Y. Simpson.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anaesthesia, or the employment of chloroform and ether in surgery, midwifery, etc. / by J.Y. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    remarkable, or very important amount of pain, and that immu- nity from this pain during operations would be, perhaps, an evil rather than a good to humanity,—a calamity rather than a blessing. . u u • At a meeting of the South London Medical Society, held m April last, Drf Gull read a paper on the injurious effects of ether inhalation, and ended his communication with queries as to the ''desirahilitij of removing pain, &c.* Mr. Bransby Cooper, surgeon to Guy's Hospital, afterwards aflirmed it as liis opinion, that pain was a premonitory condition, no doubt fitting parts, the subject of lesion, to reparatory action, and, thereTore, he (Mr. Cooper) should feel averse to the prevention of it.t Pain, argues Mr. Nunn, surgeon to the Colchester and Essex Hospital, in some observations against ether inhala- tion,—pain [toothache?] is, doubtless, our great safeguard under ordinary circumstances; but for it we should be hourly falling into danger; and I am (he continues) inclined to believe that pain should be considered as a healthy indication, and as an essential concomitant with surgical operations, and that it is amply compensated by the effects it produces on the system, as the natural incentive to reparative action.J Arguing in a similar but still more bitter strain against etherization. Dr. Pickford affirms, that pain during operations is, in the majority of cases, even desirable ; and its prevention or annihilation is, for the most part, hazardous to the patient.§ Upon one of the first communications being given in to the French Academy of Sciences upon etherization, M. Magendie, the distinguished physiologist, maintained|l that pain has always its usefulness ; he doubted if there was a true advantage in suppressing pain, by rendering patients insensible, during an operation; and argued, that it was a trivial matter to suffer {c''est peu de chose de sovffrir;) and a discovery whose object was to prevent pain was of a slight (mediocre) interest only. When the effects of ether were discussed before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, at one of their meetings in February, Professor Syme stated, that he did not attach much impor- tance to causing extinction of pain during operations ;TI and more lately, he has published the opinion, that on many of those occasions in which he has seen the severest surgical operations performed, and under the greatest liberties ever * See Report of the Meetings in the London Medical Gazette for April 30,1847, p. 777. + Ibid. t London Medical Gazette for March 5, p. 415. § On the Injurious Effects of the Inhalation of Ether, in the Edinburgh Med. ical and Surgical Journal for July, 1847, p. 258. II Gazette Medicate de Paris, 6th Feb. 1847, pp. 112,113. If Monthly Journal of Medical Science for April, p. 734.