Surgical experience of chloroform / By James Miller.

  • Miller, James, 1812-1864.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical experience of chloroform / By James Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and careful the sounding—lies as steady and as quiet as if dead; the touch and ear of the surgeon have it all their own w^ay, and, in ordinary cases, he is sure of avoiding error in diagnosis. And not only so, he is at the same time placed in circumstances extremely favourable for ascertaining all about tlie stone—besides determining its actual presence—its size, probable shape and hardness, its smoothness or roughness, the state of the bladder's coats and capacity, &g. ; all matters very relevant, and important to be known. Not long ago,I sounded a boy, under chloroform, and at first believed I had come against a stone. Carefully continuing the perquisition, however, and repeating the collision of the sound against what was deemed the foreign body, I became quite satisfied that no stone ex¬ isted ; and that what I at first took to be such, was only a bold projection from a fasciculated bladder, coated perhaps with sabulous deposit. Had it not been for the anaesthetic, I should have had a roaring and restless patient, might have been deceived in diagnosis, and might have added another to the list of those who have cut into the bladder and found nothing. What happens in one case, in this way, is likely to happen in many ; and thus safety to the surgeon, in sounding, comes by chloroform. The other half of the proposition is equally manifest. By anaesthesia, the pain and shock of sounding being removed, that operation is thereby rendered safer to the patient, both in its immediate and in its remote consequences, XXXII. BY ANiESTHESivV, LITHOTOMY, IN CASES OF DISEASED KIDNEY, MAY BE RENDERED BOTH WARRANTABLE AND HOPEFUL. If a stone patient have coagulable urine, which is also purulent-looking, thick, and foetid; if he be thin, pale, ex¬ hausted, and suffer much from pain in the loins—the surgeon is sadly averse to cutting him : for this simple and sufficient reason—He will die.” That is the ordinary prognosis, in such cases; warranted by experience. The risk is, that the shock of the operation will act untowardly on the renal symp-