Sir James Simpson's introduction of chloroform / By his daughter.

  • Eve Blantyre Simpson
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir James Simpson's introduction of chloroform / By his daughter. 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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    -^13^ SIR JAMES SIMPSON'S INTRODUCTION OF CHLOROFORM. BY HIS DAUGHTER. I have drunken deep Of all the blessedness of sleep. CZu^.^c^. i'bU DOOR OF DR. SIMPSON S HOUSE, 52 QUEEN STREET, WHERE THE EXPERIMENTS WERE TRIED. ^'PHE old order changeth, yielding place to -» new, and science nowadays presses so rapidly onward that chloroform, after deaden- ing pain for nearly half a century, may soon be superseded by some newer discovery. Before that time comes, before those who can remem- ber when there was no blessed anodyne to annul suffering, and before those who assisted at the introduction of chloroform, are gone from us, it may be of interest to look back and recall the circumstances of its first employment, in 1847, by my father. Professor James Y. Simpson. Of tlie few who were then assisting him in his e.\- periments to discover the drug most potent for anesthetic purposes, there survive only two, and from them I have gleaned the recollections of that event here recorded. That an anesthetic drug of some kind had long been used, old records bear witness. In- dian hemp had narcotic power, and it is sup- ]iosed that from it was brewed the wine of the condemned referred to by Amos, 700 B. c. In an old Chinese manuscript one Hoa- tlioa, A. D. 300, mentions the use of a decoction of hemp which he gave to one patient who was to undergo an operation; at the end of some seconds the patient became asinsensible asif he were drunk, or deprived of life, and after a cer- COLERIDGE. tain number of days he found himself reestab- lished without having experienced the slightest pain during the operation. Homer tells how Helen •' straightway cast into the wine a drug that frees men from grief and from anger, and causes oblivion of all ills. Such cunning and ex- cellent drugs the daughter of Jove possessed, which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, gave her, an Egyptian. Pliny, speaking of mandragora, says, It has the power of causing sleep in those who take it. It is taken against serpents, and before cuttings and puncturings, lest they should be felt. One De Lucca, li\ing at the end of the thirteenth century, tells how he compounded a sleeinng-draugin, and describes how the sponge is to be saturated with it, and adds, As oft as there shall be need of it, place this sponge in hot water for an hour, and let it be applied to the nostrils of him who is to be operated on until he has fallen asleep, and so let the surgery be performed. The greatest step toward the introduction of an anesthetic, however, was made by Sir Humphrey Davy, who many times in the last year of the last century experimented upon himself with nitrous oxid gas, and further found that headache and other pains disap- peared under its influence. Faraday in Great Britain, and Godman in America, showed as the result of their observation and experience that the effects on the nervous system of the inhalation of the vapor of sulphuric ether were quite similar to those produced by the inhala- tion of the vapor of nitrous oxid gas. Dr. Mor- ton of Boston got the idea into his mind that sulphuric ether might prove successful, and veri- fied the speculation September 30, 1846, by a dental operation on Eben Frost, and fixed that date as an era in science. When James Young Simpson was onl\' a stu- dent in his teens, the agony of a woman under the knife, though in the skilful hands of Mr. Lis- ton, horrified him in such measure that from beholding her torture (which was torture also to his sympathetic nature) he went to seek work in the courts of law rather than to suffer more in the school of medicine. He, however, nevei became a writer's clerk. The student lad turned