On the use of medicated inhalations in the treatment of diseases of the respiratory organs / by John M. Scudder ; with an introduction to the subject by W. Abbotts Smith.

  • John Milton Scudder
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the use of medicated inhalations in the treatment of diseases of the respiratory organs / by John M. Scudder ; with an introduction to the subject by W. Abbotts Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the ultimate abandonment of the project, but not before researches had been conducted on a sufficiently exten- sive scale to show that much good might be derived from the inhalation of some of the gases employed, especially of oxygen, if some plan could be devised by which they could be generated in a less costly and more portable manner, so that patients could use them at their own homes, instead of their being compelled to undertake long and hurtful journeys. Those of our readers who desire additional details of the history of Dr. Beddoes' Medical Pneumatic Institution, will find much interesting information in Beddoes' Letter to Erasmus Darwin, M.D., on a New Method of treating Pulmonary consumption, published in 1793, in Davy's Chemical and Philosophical Researches,* written by that author whilst he was superintendent of the Medi- cal Pneumatic Institution, and published in 1800, and in the valuable Memoir of Sir Humphry Davy, edited by his brother Dr. John Davy. The impediments just referred to, thrown in the way of administering oxygen by inhalation, appear to have baffled later writers on pulmonary affections. Laennec, * During his residence at Clifton, neir Bristol, where the Medical Pneu- matic Institution was situated, Davy experimented upon most of the gases then known. Dr. Druitt, in his very useful Surgeon's Vade Mecum (seventh edition, p. 702), points out the important fact that Davy, in con- ducting some experimental researches on the properties of nitrous oxide, found that its inhalation mitigated the pain of cutting a wisdom-tooth, and from other circumstances connected with its inhalation, he threw out the hint that as it appeared to be capable of destroying physical pain, so it might probably be used with advantage during surgical operations. ' From this discovery of Davy's and that of cotemporaneous observers that the inhalation of ether, pure, or medicated with coniuuior some other vegetable sedative, allayed the irritation in spasmodic asthma and whooping-congh, may be traced the inestimable boon of Chloroform, ae an anaesthetic.
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