On the progress of etherization / by Lunsford P. Yandell.

  • Yandell, Lunsford P. (Lunsford Pitts), 1805-1878.
Date:
[1849?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the progress of etherization / by Lunsford P. Yandell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    which its use has been followed by fatal or injurious con- sequences, and also give the experience of the profession, up to the present time, respecting its value in obstetrics and its influence upon the mortality of surgical opera tions. In this way we shall be able to form an enlightened judgment concerning the safety and utility of the practice. Such a review, if carefully and impartially made, cannot be otherwise than interesting to the practitioner, whose mind may still be in doubt as to the safety of the new re- medies. Many such I know there are in the country— cautious men, who are deterred by the reported casualties from making trial of ethereal inhalations. They are wait- ing for more evidence, anxious to avail themselves of all improvements in the art, but doubtful of the propriety of using agents capable of destroying life so speedily. A disease in which etherization was early applied was Traumatic Tetanus. A notice of the case was communica- ted to the readers of this Journal by Dr. D. W. Yandell in on;'of his letters from Paris. M.Pertusio, a surgeon of a hospital at Turin, caused a patient laboring under traumatic tetanus to inhale the vapor of ether on the 13th of Feb., 1847, shortly after the practice was introduced into the Paris hospitals. The muscular contraction was instantly overcome, and although the tetanic symptoms reappeared as soon as the influence of the ether had ceased, by contin- uing to apply it five or six times a day, the disease was finally subdued. On the 4th of March, the patient had passed a week without experiencing the slightest symp- toms of tetanus. In the London Lancet, for October 1848, a case of trau- matic tetanus is reported by J. C. Lansdown, E-<q., sur- geon of the Bristol General Hospital, in which the inhala- tion of ether was successful. The attack followed am- putation of the foot for disease of the tarsal bones. Ten days after the operation tetanic symptoms were developed. Ethereal inhalation was at once resorted to, and under its