Local anæsthesia in general medicine and surgery : being the practical application of the author's recent discoveries / By J. Leonard Corning.

  • Corning, J. Leonard (James Leonard), 1855-1923.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Local anæsthesia in general medicine and surgery : being the practical application of the author's recent discoveries / By J. Leonard Corning. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    taken. Although the method of Moore was put to a practical test by several medical men of eminence, it did not accomplish what he had been led to antici- pate, and was eventually completely forgotten. In 1799 Sir Humphry Davy, then a young man, discovered the intoxicating effects of nitrous-oxide gas. Owing, however, to a variety of causes, one of the principal of which being certain technical diffi- culties connected with the manufacture of the gas, this important discovery did not receive an extensive practical application till many years afterward. Most of the following facts connected with the dis- covery of the anaesthetic properties of ether are taken from Dr. Lyman's well-known book on anaesthesia, to which I am indebted for the principal facts contained in this historical resume: In the year 1839 a party of boys, in Anderson, South Carolina, were thus amusing themselves (with the inhalation of ether), when in their excited mood they seized a negro boy who was watching the antics of his betters, and by main force compelled him to inhale the ether from a handkerchief which was held over his mouth and nose. At first his struggles only added to the amuse- ment of his captors; but soon they ceased; the boy was unconscious, motionless, stertorous—evidently dying. But, after an hour of consternation on the part of the spectators, he revived and was no worse for his alarming experience. Three years after this occurrence one of the actors in this affair, a young man named Wilhite, entered the office of Dr. W. C. Long, a physician who was then practicing in the town of Jefferson, Jackson County, Georgia. The worthy