Anaesthesia, or the employment of chloroform and ether in surgery, midwifery, etc / By J.Y. Simpson.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anaesthesia, or the employment of chloroform and ether in surgery, midwifery, etc / By J.Y. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CONDITIONS FOR INSURING SUCCESSFUL: ANESTHESIA. To produce, however, the full and perfect effects of etheri- zation, it is necessary to conduct the process in conformity with certain conditions. _ These conditions it is not the object of the present communication to consider. But I will take the liberty of mentioning two or three leading points, the impor- tance of which, in relation to the attainment of complete success, has become strongly impressed upon my own mind by a some- what extensive experience in’ etherization during the last few months. i First, The patient ought to be left, as far as possible, in a state of absolute quietude and freedom from mental excitement, both during the induction of etherization, and during his recovery from it.* All talking and all questioning should be strictly prohibited. In this way any tendency to excitement is eschewed, and the proper effect of the ether inhalation more speedily and certainly induced. And, secondly, with the same view, the primary stage of exhilaration should be entirely avoided, or at least reduced to the shortest possible limit, by impregnating the respired air as fully with the ether vapour as the patient can bear, and by allowing it to pass into the lungs both by the mouth and nostrils, so.as rapidly and at once to superinduce its complete and anesthetic effect.. Latterly, I have found that * The area of an. hospital operation theatre is hence, perhaps, not the most favourable place for securing all the advantages of etherization, or rather for shunning all its disadvantages. Lately, ina case in which Professor Miller per- formed partial amputation of the foot, in.the Royal Infirmary, I etherized the boy who was the subject of it, in his bed in the wards. He was carried in this state up stairs to the operating theatre—the amputation performed—and the patient brought back again to his bed before he was allowed to awake. He was thus, at one and at the same time, entirely spared-the moral shock and pain of being transported and carried in before a formidable collection of surgeons and students, and saved from the physical sufferings attendant upon the amputation itself; for he was perfectly unconscious of aught that had occurred, and, when he awoke, he was not aware that he had been operated upon, or had even left his bed. While being carried from the ward to the operating room, the sponge with which he was etherized was kept fixed over his face with a couple of common elastic letter bands.. In our surgical hospitals, if a ward immediately adjoining the operating theatre were set aside for operation cases, it would in this way facilitate the process of etherization, and insure more certain and perfect results from it.