Dr. Charles T. Jackson's statement of the history of his discovery of the means of preventing all sensations of pain in surgical operations by administration of vapor of pure sulphuric ether mixed with air, by pulmonary inhalation.

  • Jackson, Charles T. (Charles Thomas), 1805-1880.
Date:
[1851?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Charles T. Jackson's statement of the history of his discovery of the means of preventing all sensations of pain in surgical operations by administration of vapor of pure sulphuric ether mixed with air, by pulmonary inhalation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    11/14
    I did not think it so safe as pure sulphuric ether, and therefore pre- pared the latter. I included it, however, among the agents that would probably serve as a substitute for sulphuric ether, in my communica- tions subsequently made to Robert H. Eddy, Esq., the Patent Solicitor, and it was inserted in the patent taken out by him in the name of Mor- ton. In 1847, I learned from the French journals that M. Flourerjs had •employed a mixture of chloroform and sulphuric ether as a substitute for pure sulphuric ether, as an anaesthetic agent; and soon after, that Mr. Waldie, a Scotch chemist, had suggested to Dr. Simpson, that pure chloroform would serve as a substitute for the sulphuric ether, which he had been using, pursuant to my published directions. On the 1st of January, 1848, I published in the Boston Atlas, a very full account of the method of preparing pure chloroform, and gave full and minute instructions to an eminent druggist of this city, Mr. W. B. Little, how to prepare it on a large scale. I also publicly administered it to a number of persons, to Dr. John C. Warren, and to Mr. Joseph Wightman, at the Warren Club, and to my pupils in my laboratory, and without any accident of any ftind. I also prepared, and gave away, large quantities of pure chloroform, and of a mixture of chloroform and pure sulphuric ether, which I recom- mended as preferable to that more powerful and somewhat dangerous agent, chloroform. On the 1st of October, 1848, I published in a pamphlet edited by Mr. W. B. Little, a more full account of my experiments, and especial- ly of those made at the Mcljean Asylum for the Insane, by Dr. Luther V. Bell and myself, on previously insane patients, who were greatly relieved by this administration of the mixture of ether and chloroform. No unpleasant accidents ever happened to any of the patients to whom I administered the preparation ; and I was generally successful, even in the most desperate cases of insanity, in rendering the patient perfectly insensible and unconscious, which state gave rest to the agitated ner- vous system, and relieved the patient in a most remarkable manner. I urged the use of this agent in the treatment of intermittent fevers, in which it has since been successfully employed. Chloroform soon became cheap, and a common article in the drug- gists' shops, and was used with great carelessness, by uneducated drug- gists and other unscientific persons, and deaths soon began to alarm our •community, from the want of skilful use of this powerful agent. I was called to administer remedies to persons thrown into dreadful convulsions, of many days continuance, from the improper administra- tions of pure, or rather strong, chloroform, and so frequent was the abuse of this agent, that I was forced to denounce it as an unsafe sub- stitute for the ether originally proposed by me as a means for the super- induction of anaesthesia. I allowed its use when diluted with sulphuric ether, and instructed physicians in the mode of preparing the mixture in proper proportions. I have not known of any accident having taken place from the use of the preparation presented by me, and I use it in my own family freely and without fear, in parturition, and in rendering my children insensible to pain while they have to undergo the operation of extraction of teeth.