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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    described at length the various therapeutic uses to which it, and consequently any other similar ansesthetic, could be applied in surgery, in midwifery, in medicine, and in medical j urisprudence ; and ultimately I have occupied the last three columns of the article by a brief historical sketch of the various ana3sthetic agents which have been used previously to the introduc- tion of chloroform. And this historical sketch is the special object of your new attack. In giving, in my lectures and otherwise, a history of ana3sthetics, I have sometimes traced them from the earliest kno^vn periods downwards to the present day ; but more frequently I have followed the inverse order, because I have found' it more instructive and interesting—viz. that of tracing them gradually backwards from their most recent to tlieir most ancient form. I have followed this last method in the said article in the Encyclopoedia Britannica, and have hence first mentioned chloroform as then the most recent ansesthetic in the two following lines :— The vapour of chloroform was first proposed by Dr. Simpson as an ansesthetic a^ent in 1847. I then, after these two lines, give above twenty lines to sulphuric ether, beginning thus :— For a year previous the vapour of sulphuric ether had been used to a considerable extent both in America and Europe, for the purpose of inducing insensibility to pain in surgical operations. It was first practically adopted for this purpose in 1846 by Dr. Morton, a dentist at Boston, in America. Subsequently Dr. Charles T. Jackson of that city claimed the right of having suggested to Dr. Morton sulphuric ether as an agent capable of producing insensibility to pain. But the power of produc- ing by the vapour of sulphuric ether an insensibility exactly like that pro- duced by the inhalation of nitrous oxide gas, had been long previously known, and so on through its liistory.* Thirdly, I allude to carbonic acid as suggested by Dr. Hickman in 1S28 ; fourthly; to nitrous oxide gas as hinted at by Davy in 1800 ; fifthly, to compression of the nerves'as used by Dr. Moore in 1784 ; sixthly, to compression of the carotids as suggested by Valverdi and others in the sixteenth century ; seventhly, to the fumes and extracts of mandragora, Indian hemp, and other soporific drugs, as practised by mediaeval and ancient Roman and Greek ^eons. Now comes your strong and strange accusation or accusations. For first you hold, as far as I understand you, that the article was written for my self-exaltation, or to quote your own words, in favom- of the self-exalt- ation of the writer. Of any such object I know and feel myself to have been utterly guiltless, either in this or any other of my writings. In the whole course of this long encyclopsedic article upon chloroform, if my object had been self-exaltation, I might not unjustly have connected my name with several of the original suggestions and practices stated in the article.; but I have mentioned my name only once, and that in the brief * You underscore the expression used to a considerable extent, probably with a \ ie\v of indicating tliat that is doubtful; but such, I believe, was the fact here and elsewhere in the first year of etherisation. In the Edinburgh Medical Journal for September IS47, I lind it stated by me (p 153) that during the last six months etherisation has been used to a considerable extent in Bi itish sureerv The Editor of the same journal, in his December number—chloroform ha\'ing been introduced in the interval—observes, In Edinburgh it (chloroform) has been used publicly by all the surgeons of the Royal Infirmary [they had not all used ether], and its employment in midwifeiy practice is almost universal. Ether, he adds, has almost been abandoned (p. 456).