On the invention of local anæsthesia by refrigeration / letter from Dr. James Arnott.

  • Arnott, James, 1794-1885.
Date:
[©1867?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the invention of local anæsthesia by refrigeration / letter from Dr. James Arnott. 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.

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    the invention. Dr. Richardson, himself, does not go bo far as this in his reply to my letter. He acknowledgea his mistake in supposing he had discovered a new principle of local anaesthe- sia; but he greatly exaggerates the value of the method he employs for carrying into practice the principle which I had discovered eighteen years before. The natural discovery, of which he speaks, that cold is the destroyer of sensation, was aUuded to in my first communication on local ansesthesia in the Lancet for September 9th, 1848. It i3 there stated that we have all had experience of this anaesthetic in frosty weather; but the dread of gangrene and inflammation from intense cold (a dread which the high authority of John Himter confirmed) prevented its benumbing effect from being rendered useful in medicine, until my experiments and obvservations had shewn the perfect safety of applying a degree of cold even greater than that which will immediately freeze the part. It is in shewing this, and in ascertaining that the organic change produced by intense cold, instead of impeding, promotes the heaUng of the operation wound, and that it is powerfully remedial in several important diseases, that my discoveries respecting it principally consist. The most efficient way of applying congelation, and combining it with pressure, has also occupied much of my attention, as I have been anxious to extend its use to the deepest operations and most deeply seated diseases.* In the reply of Dr. Richardson there is an imposing air of liberality displayed by what he calls his unbounded recognition'' of my labours onLocal Ansesthesia in his papers and addresses. But this recognition was not required by medical societies, most of the members of which, it may be presumed, were already acquainted with one or more of my numerous writings on the subject; and on other occasions it does not appear to have been always made. There is no sign of such recognition in the Report of the Meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, above adverted to, nor in the fact that a Medical Journal over which he appears to have an unbounded influence, has in its constant notices of Local Anaesthesia during the greater part of last year, carefully ignored these labours ever since Dr. Richardson's announcement that he had discovered a new way of producing it. The recognition by Dr. Richardson of my labours has probably been always accompanied by the same depreciation of the means I have employed for carrying out the piinciple of local anaesthesia, which is expressed in his letter, and which pervades the notices of the subject in the journal alluded to. The writer of one of these (Britith Medical Journal, 10th March, 1866) while he condemns all other plans of producing congelation as perfect » 11 * The discovery of the uses of intense cold in therapeutics has been followed by its employment in physiological investigations. The fact mentioned by Dr. Weir Mitchell, In his interesting paper on this subject in the jdmerican Journal of Medical Science, for January last, that stupor or deep sleep is caused by its application to the head of a bird, I ascerUined at a verj early periud of my enquiries.