A letter on suspended animation, containing experiments shewing that it may be safely employed during operations on animals, with the view of ascertaining its probable utility in surgical operations on the human subject, addressed to T.A. Knight, Esq / [Henry Hill Hickman].

  • Hickman, Henry Hill, 1800-1830
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter on suspended animation, containing experiments shewing that it may be safely employed during operations on animals, with the view of ascertaining its probable utility in surgical operations on the human subject, addressed to T.A. Knight, Esq / [Henry Hill Hickman]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/64 (page 8)
    [8] whilst in possession of all their powers of feeling and suffering. Several circumstances led me to suspect that wounds made on ani- mals whilst in a torpid state, would be found, in many cases, to heal most readily; and the results of some experiments which I have made, lead me to think that these conjec- tures are well founded, and to hope that you will think the results sufficiently interesting* to induce you to do me the honor to lay them before the Royal Society. The expe- riments were necessarily made upon living animals, but they were confined to animals previously condemned to death; and as their lives were preserved, and their suffering very slight, (certainly not so great as they would have sustained if their lives had been taken away by any of the ordinary methods of kill- ing such animals) 1 venture to hope that they, iu the aggregate, rather received benefit than injury. Subjects of different species were employed, chiefly puppies of a few weeks or months old, and the experiments were often repeated, but as the results were all uniform, and as my chief object is to at- tract the attention of other medical men to