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.

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    HISTORY OF ANESTHESIA. things which the Boston School had done—and had not done—in the cause of anaesthetics j and how mistakes and errors might possibly have originated on the subject, between your city and other places, which I trusted could be fully removed. Hence pardon me address- ing to you the following observations. A man who would beUeve your deductions from it, would also believe that baloons and gas-lights were known to the ancients because the classical wiiters believed in wax wings and subterranean fires. Sir Humphiy Davy must be exonerated from all practical knowledge of anaistiietic inhalation. Otherwise he is chargeable with all the tortures of amputation and lithotomy which have taken place since he made the discovery and concealed it. The great discovery having been made of a secure, perfect, and always attain- able anaesthesia, the substitution for ether of chloroform, preferable in odour and bulk, but so far more dangerous that no life insurance company would take the risks as equal, is a matter of much less important detail. And so of the fui-ther application of the newly discovered aniesthesia to the different forms of pain. You object to my statement which you quote, that anaesthetic inhalalation began in America, and was first used in the extraction of teeth, and afterwards in capital operations in the Mass. General Hospital, and in obstetrical practice ; the last three words of which, afford you the text for several paragraphs of animated invective with which you close your letter. Had I attached the same importance which you do to your agency in this detail of ob- stetric application, I should probably have given it more prominence and careful attention. I do not now question that you were the first to use ether in labour, but who first introduced anaesthetics in obstetrical practice is a matter of limited importance. Soon after the great discovery of etherisation was made, the pages of medical journals, and the meetings of medical societies, were crowded with re- ports of its application to most of the ills and difficulties which flesh is heii- to— colic and convulsions, dislocations, hernia and parturition, nem-algia, gout, gravel, and gall-stones—each heralded by its respective claimant as an original discover)'. The several glories of these ex-post-facto benefactors of man, may perhaps pass into oblivion, unless rescued by some future Council of Edinburgh. The world is more interested about the origin of great discoveries than the question who afterwards suggested their various applications. Finally you allude to the monument erected in Boston by a pubHe-spuited individual, and which, among others, bears the following inscription :— To com- memorate the discovery that the inhaling of ether causes insensibility to pain ; first proved to the world at the Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, October, A.d. 1846. You inquire why no individual names were inscribed upon it. I reply, because it was intended only to commemorate the city of Boston as the birth-place of the discovery ; perhaps in prophetic view of some effort to con- fuse the liistory and relations of the whole subject, and then to connect some other name and place with this discovery. Mankind arc not apt to forget their benefactors, nor even those who stand in the place of benefactors. They cheerfully unite in ovations and festivities given to distinguished men by their friends and fellow-citizens. But the sufleriug and now exempted world, wiU not forget the poor dentist, who, amid poverty, privation, and discouragement, matured, revealed, and established the most bene- ficent discovery which has blessed humanity since the primeval days of paradise. —Your obedient servant, Jacob Bigelow. [Ed.]