The Harcourt inhaler.

  • Buxton, Dudley Wilmot, 1855-1931.
Date:
[1904?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Harcourt inhaler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Chloroform in Surgical Anaesthesia : THE HARCOURT INHALER AND EXACT PERCENTAGE VAPOURS.1 By Dudley W. Buxton, M.D., B.S., M.R.C.P., Anaesthetist and Lecturer on Anaesthetics in University College Hospital. The apparatus which I have been asked to explain to you this evening owes its origin to the ingenuity of Mr. A. Vernon Harcourt, F.R.S., sometime Reader in Chemistry at Christ Church, Oxford. The British Medical Associa- tion in 1901 appointed a Committee, of which I was a member, to carry out certain investigations with regard to chloroform, and Mr. Vernon Harcourt was co-opted a member of that Committee. In the course of our investiga- tions, it became apparent that we must obtain some method of exactitude by which we could ensure a definite amount of chloroform being delivered, in other words, a definite dosage by a known percentage of chloroform vapour in air. Now, in 1899 Mu Vernon Harcourt published, in the “ Transactions of the Chemical Society,” a description of a method whereby a current of air could be mixed with any desired proportion of chloroform vapour. This method was, however, only applicable to small animals, and was supple- mented in June, 1902, by a communication by Mr. Harcourt to the Royal Society. In the paper in question reference is made to two methods, both of which were demonstrated before the Committee of the British Medical Association, and the second was adopted by them, after various experiments and trials, as being applicable to human beings.2 The apparatus shown to-night is the outcome of these experiments, and is a remarkably ingenious application of chemico-physics to the service of suffering humanity. While the Committee of the British Medical Association were studying the various methods and apparatus for giving chloroform, I was requested to report upon various inhalers, and among them upon Mr. Vernon Harcourt’s Chloroform Regulator. Let me, before going into detail, explain that the principle of this apparatus is that air passes over the surface of chloroform by the aspiration of the patient’s respiration, and that by its construction the apparatus delivers a maximum strength of 2 per cent. I was first uncertain whether this 2 per cent, strength would satisfy the requirements of surgery, although possibly adequate for physiological work. Probably those of you who have not used or seen the apparatus used will be inclined to take this view. I mention my own mental attitude at the commencement of my research; 1 Read at a Meeting of the British Gynaecological Society, March 10, 1904. 2 Mr. Harcourt formulated a Report on these methods, which the Committee duly presented to the British Medical Association. See Brit. Med. Journ., July 18, 1903, cxlii.