Contributions to practical medicine and surgery / by James Arnott.

  • Arnott, James (James Moncrieff), 1794-1885.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to practical medicine and surgery / by James Arnott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ON INTENSE COLD, OR CONGELATION, AS A MEANS OF PRO¬ DUCING INSENSIBILITY IN SURGICAL OPERATIONS. We learn from the works of surgical and other writers, that attempts had been made in remote times and by various measures to produce insensibility in operations ; but that although this object was fulfilled to a certain extent by some of these measures, they were accompanied with too much hazard to be retained. Two means have lately been introduced which promise greater stability, namely, the in¬ haling of narcotic vapours, and the application of intense cold. The production of insensibility by the inhalation of nar¬ cotic or intoxicating gases and vapours, is an invention which we owe to the United States of America. It was known, indeed, a hundred years before, that dogs which had been rendered insensible by immersion in the carbonic acid gas contained in the Grotto del Cane, near Naples, were gene¬ rally resuscitated by being brought again into the open air ; and Dr. Hickman, an English physician, had brought ridi¬ cule on himself by recommending that patients about to be operated upon should be subjected to a similar process. Sir Humphrey Davy, also, had, about the beginning of the A 2