Remarks on the superinduction of anaesthesia in natural and morbid parturition: with cases illustrative of the use and effects of chloroform in obstetric practice / [Sir James Young Simpson].

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the superinduction of anaesthesia in natural and morbid parturition: with cases illustrative of the use and effects of chloroform in obstetric practice / [Sir James Young Simpson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the propriety of their bestirring themselves so as to be able, in the exercise of their profession, to secure for their patients an immunity from the throes and agonies of childbirth. Perhaps, as an apology for their indolence and apathy, some may be ready to argue, that the pain and suffering attendant on parturition is not dangerous and destructive in its results, however agonizing and distressing it may be to the patient during its continuance. But the argument is funda- mentally unsound. All pain is per se, and especially when in excess, destructive and even ultimately fatal in its action and effects. It “ exhausts (says Mr Travers) the principle of life”? “ It exhausts (says Mr Burns of Glasgow) both the system and the part.’? Mere pain (observed the late Dr Gooch) can destroy life.’*® And the great pain accompany- ing human parturition is no exception to this general patho- logical law. or, in fact, the maternal mortality attendant upon parturition, regularly increases in a ratio progressive with the increased duration of the woman’s sufferings. The statistical data published by Dr Collins, in his Report of the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, affords ample proof of this gene- ral principle. According to calculations which I some time ago made from Dr Collins’ data, I found that while in the _ women delivered in the Dublin Hospital, and whose suffer- ings were terminated within 2 hours, only 1 in 820 of the mothers died; where the labour varied in duration from 2 to 6 hours, 1 in 145 of the mothers died; in those in whom it continued from 7 to 12 hours, 1 in 80 died; where it en- dured from 12 to 24 hours, 1 in 26 died; where it lasted from 24 to 36 hours, 1 in 17 died; and out of all those whose parturient sufferings were prolonged beyond 36 hours, 1 in - every 6 perished. Again, some may possibly be inclined to reason, that any means by which we could produce a state of anesthesia or insensibility to the physical pains of labour, must, of neces- sity, be of such a character as to add to the perils and dan- 1 Inquiry concerning Constitutional Irritation, vol. i. p. 76. 2 Principles of Surgery, vol. i. p. 502. 3 Dr Merriman’s Synopsis of Parturition, p. 239.