The discovery of modern anæsthesia : by whom was it made? A brief statement of facts / by Laird W. Nevius.

  • Nevius, Laird W.
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The discovery of modern anæsthesia : by whom was it made? A brief statement of facts / by Laird W. Nevius. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    simple though bold experiment, however—a lighted paper held to the mouth of an etherized patient—put all fears happily at rest. As late as April 13, i852, Dr. H. S. Patter- son, while discussing this subject before the Philadelphia County Medical Society, of Phila- delphia, said : Our hospital—alone among great hospitals—has never permitted their [an- aesthetics] employment. Dr. Thomas E. Bond, Professor of Special Pathology and Therapeutics in the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, in a letter to the editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, dated December i5, 1846, said : I protest against the whole business, because I verily believe the great discovery to be ut- terly useless. If it does not succeed better in Boston than it does in other places nearer to your humble servant, I would not give a far- thing for it. In this part of the world it has utterly failed to do what it ought to do, and unfortunately it has done what it ought not to have done. In one case the patient did not get insensible, but got drunk, and boxed the surgeon-dentist's jaws as his reward for ad-