History of modern anæsthetics : a second letter to Dr. Jacob Bigelow / by Sir J.Y. Simpson.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
[1870], [©1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of modern anæsthetics : a second letter to Dr. Jacob Bigelow / by Sir J.Y. Simpson. 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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    me ; for, in claiming, as you there did, for Boston the introduction of ansestlietic inhalations in obstetrical practice, you attempted to annex and appropriate to your country what most indubitably belonged to mine. In your last letter you begrudgingly state to me, I do not now question that you were the first to use ether in labour ; and then you superciliously add, but who first introduced anaesthetics in obstetrical practice is a matter of limited importance. According to the testimony, however, of our late mutual friend, Sir John Forbes, the application of anaesthetics to midwifery involved many more difficult and delicate pro- blems than its mere application to dentistry and surgery. New rules required to be established for its use—the time during which it could be given ascertained—its effects upon the action of the uterus, upon the state of the child, and upon the parturient and puerperal state of the mother, etc., all required to be accurately studied. Would it increase or diminish the tendency to convulsions, haemorrhage, and various other complications ? Moral and religious questions also came to be involved, and reqidred to be duly answered. The Boston patent for the nse of sidphuric ether taken out by Drs. Morton and Jackson, did not, I believe, include its employ- ment in midwifery ; and your son. Dr. Henry Bigelow, weeks after its use was first begun, deemed it only adapted to operations which were brief in their diuation, whatever be their severity. Of these the two most striking perhaps are amputations and the extraction of teethP * Tliis was pub- lished in November. When I saw Mr. Liston in London, during the following Christmas holidays, he expressed to me the opinion that the new anaesthetic would be of special use to him,—who was so swift an operator,—as he thought, like Dr. Bigelow, it could only be used for a brief time. I went back, however, from this London visit to Edinburgh, bent on testing its applicability to midwifery, and foimd that it could be safely used for hours, etc. But is its application to midwifery of limited importance, as now in the fervour of disputation you seem anxious to affirm 1 . Your words in your first article regarding the commencement of anaesthetics in Boston are these :—That anaesthetic inhalation began in this country, and was first used in the extraction of teeth, and afterwards [2] in capital opera- tions in the Massachusetts General Hospital; and [3] in obstetrical prac- tice. You adduce thus three kinds of practice in which it was used in Boston—namely (1) dentistry ; (2) surgery ; and (3) midwifery. You have omitted medicine, probably because you well knew the employment of the inhalation of sulphuric ether had been introduced (as we have seen in a previous part of this letter) into medical practice by Dr. Pearson half- a-century before. Holding, as you now afl^ect to declare, that the use of anaesthetics in obstetrical practice is a matter of limited importance, upon what ground, may I venture to ask, did you, only two or three months ago, in your first attack, adduce its aj)plication to midwifery as one of its three chief applications ? Further, among these three chief ajoplica- tions, may I ask you, in all honour and honesty, is its use not,—even in your opinion,—a matter of infinitely less importance in dentistry than in mid- * See the paper which he read flvo or six weeks after tlie introduction of sulphuric ether before the Boston Society of Medical Improvement, as cited in Brook's Essay on the Vapour of Sulphuric Ether, page 30.