Anaesthesia and non-anaesthesia in the extraction of cataract : with some practical suggestions regarding the performance of this operation, and comparative statistics of two hundred cases / by Hasket Derby.

  • Derby, Hasket, 1835-1914.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anaesthesia and non-anaesthesia in the extraction of cataract : with some practical suggestions regarding the performance of this operation, and comparative statistics of two hundred cases / by Hasket Derby. 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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    Who that has used ansesthetics has not over and again realized these objections to their employ- ment ? Who, after visiting Continental cliniques, has not envied the facility with which operations are performed on conscious subjects, and watched with interest their convalescence ? I have long wondered at the results obtained by certain Euro- pean ophthalmologists, prominent among whom I will cite Arlt and Wecker,^ results which, I frankly admit, those we have forinerlj' obtained in Boston fall fiir behind. After repeatedly witnessing their operations, and following to some extent their cases, the question naturally suggested itself as to whether, after making all due allowance for great dexterity and constant practice, their success was not in part due to the avoidance of anaesthesia. Of this I be- came firmly convinced. We are met with the stock objection that the sensibilities of the European peasant are blunter, and his power of enduring pain greater than is the case with the nervous American; that, as has al- ready been remarked, those of the present genera- tion in this country have a full realization of the fa- cility with which ancesthesia may be obtained, and of the harmlessness of ether, as far as life is co^l- cerned, and that argument with people predisposed to insist on its use is therefore of little avail. Such 1 In 1876 Professor Arlt informed me that for two years past he had met with a total loss of but 1.5 per cent. The Report of the CUniqne of Dr. de \Vecker for 1876 gives 22-2 extractions, and 3 total losses, a percentage of 1.35. At the Eye Infirmary in Boston our percentage of loss during 1875, and the three following years, was 6.7.