A treatise on etherization in childbirth : Illustrated by five hundred and eighty one cases / By Walter Channing.

  • Channing, Walter, 1786-1876.
Date:
1848
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on etherization in childbirth : Illustrated by five hundred and eighty one cases / By Walter Channing. 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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    pains so as to get through ; but you will give me the chloroform, won't you ? The cries of the child now attracted her attention, and the charm was over. Both mother and child have done unusually well. Duration of anaesthesia about four hours, including the short interrup- tion referred to. Chloroform inhaled, nearly two ounces. From Win. Thornton Parker, M.D. Walter Channing, M.D. South Boston, Jan. 25, 1848. Dear Sir, — I received your communication, in regard to ether and chloroform, yesterday, and regret that my experience can furnish but two cases of etherization in labor. The chloroform I have not seen used at all. In my first case, perfect quietness, and rest of limbs and uterus, succeeded, for twenty minutes, to a state of unusual uneasiness and jactitation; and, on waking at the end of that time, the patient objected to a repetition of its use, preferring to complete the labor in the natural way. The second case occurred, Nov. 3, 1847, — a case of tedious labor, the termination of which you may remember to have seen, — Mrs. F. She was under the influence of the ether three and a half hours. The quan- tity inhaled was from ten to twelve, ounces. The results to the mother were every way happy. In regard to the infant, it is perhaps remarkable, that it did not close its eyes for the eighteen hours succeeding its delivery, which occurred at half-past 4 o'clock, p.m. In this case, the ether seemed to increase the pain. And having since seen in the sixth volume of the American reprint of the London Lancet (Nos. 4 and 5, pp. 312 and 378), three cases reported, where a similar effect seems to have resulted from its administration, I am anxious to know, if your large experience favors a supposition that ether or chloroform ever causes such effects ? I am, with the deepest respect, your most obedient servant, Wn. Thornton Paekeb. [In answer to Dr. Parker's question in the last paragraph of his letter, I say yes. I have met with cases, and I would say in many of those in which I have induced etherization, in which uterine contractions have been increased, and in which labor has been completed after a much shorter time than its previous progress indicated. The same has been observed by others, whose communications are in this Correspondence, and to which I, with great pleasure, refer Dr. Parker.]