Alleged death from ether : to the editor of the British Medical Journal.

  • Henry Jacob Bigelow
Date:
[1875?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alleged death from ether : to the editor of the British Medical Journal. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Burgeon, to administer pwst of the etber in that institution : and li;.vin_ i.i i personally cognizant i.l' :i large proportion ol c;im's of its i'.iimiiii-trut.Dp there, down to the i resent time, besides those in my own practice, 1 have never been satisfi the occurrence of a single death which could be attributed to any property of other, apart from the gradual and pi inebriating influence which it possesses in cumniun with other anaesthetic agents. A detailed report of a case involving so urgent Bymptoms and so prompt action as the one alluded to is obviously li;i!i] inaccuracy, and the account should therefore be accepted with reservation, and rather as a good illustration of an en. quite likely to recur in the experience of those who may beli with a late English medical journal, that the less the air. during ether inhalation, the better the anaesthesia, or, with the French chemist, that nitrous oxydc only asphyxiates. Nobody doubts that asphyxia produces insensibility. This is easily shown with a bag containing a few gallons of atmospheric air. But this in- sensibility, necessarily brief, is unattended by exhilaration. It is distressing, accompanied by lividity, by rigidity if pushed far enough, and is doubtless responsible lor much of the dread which certain patients have of pulmonary inebriation. The case in question is reported as follows. David Newman, aged 14, a strumous hid. who had sui: from repeated attacks of corneitis, was admitted an in-patient of the above institution on September 25th, 1873, m der tin- care of Dr. Lake. On Wednesday, October 1>1, he was brought into the operating room in order that iridectomy might be performed. When on the table, he exhibited considerable alarm, and required some persuasion before he was induced to lie down. Dr. Griffin having taken charge of the pulse, half an OUI1CC of ether was poured on a sponge contained in a cone of spougio-piline, the latter was closely applied to the mouth and nose. A few minutes1 inhalation, the ether being nearly exhausted, three drachms more were poured on the sponge. Shortly alter com- mencing to inhale this second quantity, he began to struggle violently, getting at length into a stale bordering on opistho- tonos, his face becoming intensely scarlet. Dr. Griffin then announced that his pulse, which Up to this lime had