On the anæsthetic properties of the lycoperdon proteus, or common puff-ball / by Benjamin W. Richardson.

  • Benjamin Ward Richardson
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the anæsthetic properties of the lycoperdon proteus, or common puff-ball / by Benjamin W. Richardson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    4/15
    ON THE ANAESTHETIC PROPERTIES OF THE LYCOPERDON PROTEUS, OR COMMON PUFF-BALL. A few months since, I had a conversation with my friend Mr. Henry Hudson, a Leicestershire surgeon, on the man- agement of bees ; and was particularly interested in his description of an old, and, as I now find, very prevalent cus- tom, of stupifying these insects with the smoke of the fun- gus known under the name of puff-ball, before extracting the contents of the hive. By this stupifying process, the bees, I was told, could be rendered inactive and insensible for several minutes; but that they all recovered eventually in the most perfect manner, and that the cruel practice of destroying them with the fumes of sulphur was thus avoided. This practice of rendering bees insensible by inhalation is so much like the modern plan of producing narcotism in men and animals by ether and chloroform, that my mind very naturally seized the analogy; and I was induced to perform a series of experiments on animals with the fungus.
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