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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    of yours; they are essentially so groundless and absurd; and I know^ them m my own heart to be so utterly untrue If an American^ or English schoolboy were asked to give a relrograde chronological list of the Presidents of the United States, or the Sovereigns of England, from the present time to the commencement ot this_ century, would he not begin with General Grant and Queen Victona? According to your logic, however, that would imply self-exaltation on the part of the pupU; and to avoid this he ought to commence with the Presidents Johnson and Lincoln or King WiUiam the Fourth. But would not such a strange historical obhquity and misstatement, if unhappily indulged in, bring down condign punishment and contempt on the disciple ] And is there not occasionally truth in the saying that sages sometimes do as foolish things as schoolboys 1 If I had the same liistoiy to re-write to-day, I do not know that I would or could write it in any different terms, except by pointin- out more distinctly Dr. Wells's claims, and also Dr. Jackson's. And pray in what terms would or could you advise me that it should have been written, or should be written now 1 Ought I to have broken out into some high-flown sentence or sentences regarding the history of the anjesthetic effects of sulphuric ether, when I spoke secondly of that anaesthetic ? Would it not, let me ask you, have been more natural—for me at least—to have done so in speaking of the history of the anaesthetic eff^ects of chloroform, instead of dismiss- ing it in the two brief lines I have already quoted ; seeing, especially, that I knew that it was employed in hundreds or even thousands of instances for every five or ten in which sulphuric ether was used 1 I have, I find, printed another short epitome of the history of anaesthetics, but I am not sure that it will please you better. In a paper on Etherisation in Surgery, published in September 1847 the first of a series on the subject—I take occasion to speak of Dr. Morton of Boston as the gentleman to whom I beheve the profes- sion and mankind are really and truly indebted for first reducing into practice the production of insensibihty by ether-inhalation, with the object of annihilating pain in surgical operations —language stronger, I think, than I have seen in most American essays on the subject. And at the meeting of the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society, on November 10th of the same year, I laid before them, a paper termed Historical Eesearches regarding the Superinduction of Insensibility to Pain in Surgical Operations; and Announcement of a new Antesthetic Agent. This communication on the history