Volume 1

On the inhalation of the vapour of ether in surgical operations : containing a description of the various stages of etherization, and a statement of the result of nearly eighty operations in which ether has been employed in St. George's and University College Hospitals / By John Snow.

  • Snow, John, 1813-1858.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the inhalation of the vapour of ether in surgical operations : containing a description of the various stages of etherization, and a statement of the result of nearly eighty operations in which ether has been employed in St. George's and University College Hospitals / By John Snow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    this is the proper stage for the reduction of dislocations. The patient never begins to snore until he has reached the fourth degree, or is passing into it from the third, and from all that I have hitherto observed, I believe that when he snores: from the effects of ether, he is always totally insensible to every thing which is done to him. ‘This degree of etherization seldom continues more than two or three minutes after the process of inhalation is left off, and I have never kept the patient in this stage more than five or ten minutes; but in operations of long duration have allowed the effects of the vapour to diminish somewhat from time to time. The integrity of the functions of respiration and of cir- culation is not impaired in this degree. The breathing is generally deeper than usual, and although it has been somewhat stertorous in two or three instances, yet it contmued with great regularity, and the stertor subsided in a minute or two. The pulse is distinct and of good volume, even m patients affected with hectic, in whom, just before the inhalation, it was small and hard. It is usually accelerated, as in all the other stages of etherization. The sensibility of the glottis and pharynx continues in this degree, for the blood which flows backwards in operations on the nose and mouth is all swallowed, none of it getting mto the trachea. In the fifth degree, as met with mn animals inferior to man, they remain motionless and flaccid as in the fourth degree, and respiration begins to be irregular, feeble, or laborious. The muscles of respiration begin to suffer the loss of power which already involved the