A system of practical surgery / by William Fergusson.

  • William Fergusson
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of practical surgery / by William Fergusson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/878 (page 23)
    for this purpose ; the trial of the same agent by Dr. Horace Wells in modern times; the recommendation of the inhalation of ether by Dr. Richard Pearson, of Birmingham, in 17-95, for pulmonary affections, and the subsequent observations, to a similar effect, by Nysten, in 1815; the occasional use of the vapour of ether by various individuals for the purpose of alleviating bodily or mental anguish, had little, if any, influence in bringing forth this grand discovery; and had it not been for the eaperimentum cruris of Dr. Morton, we might yet have been in ignorance of the means of rendering the performance of opera- tions painless. On the 16th of October, 1846, Dr. J. C. Warren of Boston (a name already renowned in the annals of surgery), performed the first surgical operation, excepting those performed by Dr. Morton on the teeth, in the Massachusetts General Hospital, under this agency. The case was one of tumour in the neck. The next day Dr. Hayward, of the same city, removed a fatty tumour, and on the 7th of November following, the same gentleman performed amputation of the thigh, and Dr. Warren removed a portion of the lower jaw. The news of the discovery was soon wafted across the Atlantic. On the 17th of December of the same year. Dr. Booth of Gower-street, London, received information on the subject; on the 19th, Mr. Robin- son, the dentist, extracted a tooth under the influence of the vapour of ether, and two days after Mr. Liston, ever in the van in true surgery, showed to the as yet sceptical beholders, that the formidable opera- tion of amputation of the thigh might be performed without the con- sciousness of the patient. By the end of the year, or within a few weeks thereafter, the remarkable influence of this agent was fully tested and proved, in most of the public hospitals in this country. Wherever the news was carried, and the agent was at hand, a trial was speedy and the result satisfactory, and the only doubt that remained on the subject was as to the amount of danger involved in its use, or as to the condition, temporary or otherwise, of the patient’s system, which should admit or forbid of its application. While facts were rapidly accumulating, experiments were being made by various zealous persons on the virtues of other agents supposed to have similar influences. Among them chloric ether was the principal, when Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh, who had already resorted to anaesthesia (by ether) in Midwifery, made use of chloroform with effects seemingly superior to those obtained from any other agents hitherto tried. On the 10th of November, 1847, Dr. Simpson brought the subject before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh; and on the 15th of the same month Professor Miller performed several operations in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, under circumstances which at once established the character of the new anaesthetic. In a few days chlo- roform was tried in most parts of these islands, and from that time to the present it has held an ascendancy over every other agent. Sul- phuric ether, chloric ether, and various other powers have been used, but for general purposes chloroform has maintained its ground as the most popular of them all, although, in America, one or other of