Anaesthetic inhalation : rival claimants to the discovery : Dr. Long's claim criticised, the priority of Dr. Morton's announcement maintained.

  • William J. Morton
Date:
1879
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anaesthetic inhalation : rival claimants to the discovery : Dr. Long's claim criticised, the priority of Dr. Morton's announcement maintained. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    credible that Dr. Long had not found out that etherization could be kept up by constant inhalation—but the following words used in describing the second experiment alluded to indicate his process so clearly that there is no room for doubt, (a) that the anesthetic state was induced by the patient,—(voluntary inhalation), (b) that the amount of anesthesia thus induced was all that the operator expected to get, or did get, and (c) that he did not practice “constant inhalation.” Dr. Long says of this second experiment : “ In this operation the inhalation of ether ceased before the first incision was made ; since that time I have invariably desired patients ” (three more during three years) “ when practicable to continue its inhalation dating the time of the operation.” Of what ayail this instruction when it is known that the anaesthetic sleep abolishes volition as well as sensibility to pain, unless it were assumed that the patient’s volition to continue the ad- ministration by himself of the anaesthetic was to be relied upon in obeying the instruc- tion ? The very desire implies volition on the patient’s part. But it is evident on every hand that Venable (the subject of the first two experiments) managed the anaesthetic. He says, “ / stopped inhaling the ether before the operation was finished,” and again of the first experiment, “ / commenced inhaling the ether before the operation was commenced, and continued it until the operation was over.” If Venable was not a voluntary agent in this transaction, i. e., if he was etherized, how could he swear that he “continued it until the operation was over?” Dr. Long speaking of Venable’s behavior during the same experiment says, “ The patient continued to inhale ether during the time of the operation.” This self-administration of ether by the patient, to himself, explains why the “ anaesthetic state was of short duration.” Under this condi- tion, it would be short to-day—short because the patient could not keep up “a constant inhalation,” i. e., constant administration to himself—and it would be moreover as incom- plete as short. How incomplete Dr. Long found his process we are now in a position to judge of, from his own words in the second part of our first quotation. This sentence contains an admission disastrous to any claim set up to discovery. It shows that Dr. Long never got beyond the results established by his second experiment, viz. : An “ anaesthetic state ” of “ short duration,” induced by the patient, and incapable of maintenance by “constant inhalation.” Fulfill the above conditions of Dr. Long’s process and the word anaesthesia applied to the result would be a missnomer. It would not be anaesthesia as understood and practiced to-day—a complete stupor—an annihilation of all sensibility as well as ot consciousness,—but it would be the evanescent numbness of intoxication,—the first stage of the present anaesthesia—as inadequate then as now to the needs of surgery. Reduce the anaesthesia of to-day to this and we blot it from the world’s knowledge. And Long himself recognized the impracticability of his intentions. He states that he was “under this impression,” viz. : that the anaesthetic state was of short duration, etc., “ up to Jan- uary, 1847, three months after the practice of the real anaesthesia had become established. And he was so vividly “ under this impression ” that he “ deprived ” himself “ of ex- perimenting in the only class of cases” occurring frequently in a country practice. In other words he absolutely abandoned prosecuting his experiments because the “anaes- thetic state” was of too “short duration” to be available in the extraction of teeth even, the simplest of minor surgical operations. This is nothing more nor less than abandonment of what it is now claimed that he discovered. * We leave the subject at this point to the impartial reader. Dr. Long is entitled to the highest credit for this, that he had a clear conception of the anaesthetic process, the in- tention of producing it, and more, attempted to accomplish it—and this by the use of ether. But further he did not go. Conception, intent, and attempt are far from consti- tuting discovery ; a final step remained and that was not Dr. Long’s. W. J. M.