Anæsthesia, hospitalism, hermaphroditism and a proposal to stamp out small-pox and other contagious diseases / by Sir James Y. Simpson, Bart. ; edited by Sir W.G. Simpson, Bart.

  • James Young Simpson
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anæsthesia, hospitalism, hermaphroditism and a proposal to stamp out small-pox and other contagious diseases / by Sir James Y. Simpson, Bart. ; edited by Sir W.G. Simpson, Bart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    32/588 (page 16)
    HISTOKY OF ANESTHESIA. There has lately been raised in Boston a monument in com- memoration of it being the birth-place of anesthesia in dentistry and surgery in 1846. But have the erectors of this monument cut upon It the names of either of your fellow-citizens, Dr. Morton or Dr. Jackson, as the first investigators, or the names of Warren and Heyward, as the first Boston hospital surgeons who operated upon patients under the influence of sulphuric ether? Or have they generously inscribed upon its sides any allusions to the fact that two years previously antesthetics had been inhaled successfully in den- tistry and surgery in the city of Hartford 1 I have been informed that there does not yet appear upon the monument the name of a single American chemist, dentist, or surgeon. Is it so 1 You have the monument. Have you not had the man or men ? You commence the concluding paragraph of your letter by averring that anaesthetic inhalation ' began' (to use your own words) ' in this country [America], and was first used in the extraction of teeth, and afterwards in capital operations in the Mass. General Hospital, and in obstetrical practice.' Your words so far affirm that anaesthetic inhalations, besides being first employed in America in dentistry and surgery, were in your country also first used in ' obstetrical practice.' You must excuse my saying that this last assertion is unaccountably incorrect. The use of antesthetic inhala- tions in obstetrical practice was begun and extensively followed out in Edinburgh, weeks or even months before it was tried in Boston or in America. The first case of midwifery in which sulphuric ether was adopted as an anaesthetic occurred here under my care on January 19, 1847, and was soon afterwards reported in the journals of the day. On March 1, 1847, was published by me, in the Edin- burgh Medical Journal, an essay on the subject, containing a series of obstetrical cases, and a longish discussion of the question of the applicability of anaesthetics to midwifery. It was not, however, occurred in consequence of a Mr. Cooley, at a public lecture and exliibition of laughing gas at Hartford, striking and injuring his limb against the benches without suffering pain. On the subsequent day, to test the truth of the idea, Dr. Wells himself breathed deeply and fully tlie gas, and had a molar tooth extracted from his own mouth by Dr. Eiggs without pain. This was the first anccsthetic operation in America. Thus, in that country, the idea itself of producing artificial ansesthesia by inhalation, and the reduction of that idea to actual practice, occurred at Hartford on December 10 and 11, 1844. The first ana;sthctic operation at Boston—viz. the extraction of a tooth from a man named Frost—did not occur till 30th September 1846, or nearly two years subsequently.—(See Official Documents, Appendix, pp. 91, 95, etc.)