The effect of anaesthetics upon the human system, as evidenced by spectroscopic observations : read at a meeting of the American Dental Convention, the Southern Dental Association, and the Dental Society of the State of Maryland and District of Columbia, in joint session at Oakland, Maryland, August 16, 1877 / by S. Waterman.

  • Waterman, S. (Sigismund), 1819-1899.
Date:
[1877?]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The effect of anaesthetics upon the human system, as evidenced by spectroscopic observations : read at a meeting of the American Dental Convention, the Southern Dental Association, and the Dental Society of the State of Maryland and District of Columbia, in joint session at Oakland, Maryland, August 16, 1877 / by S. Waterman. 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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    Preyers experiments upon the dogs, reminds you how rapidly the oxygen is consumed in the animal economy and how neces- sary it is to supply the defect in our equally speedy way; and you can understand how rapidly a fatal result must insue from the action of anaesthetics which, cannot supply the defect, and which in addition greedily appropriate the oxygen which the blood may have stored up and still further destroy the integrity of the haemato-cryst. in a manner so as to paralyse its vital func- tions. Some of these combinations can be obtained in crystal- line form. We can thus produce the prussic acid, the car- bonic oxide, and the nitric oxide haemato-crystalline. The combinations are for stable than the normal oxyhaemato-crystals are. When blood ha? once entered into a permanent crystalline union with nitrous oxide gas, we know as yet, of no chemical process to restore the resulting nitrous-oxide haemato-crystalline to its normal condition. No electric current posesses the power to restore the primitive integrity of the blood when once brought into this fixed condition. Recently Donders and Young have demonstrated and Podalinsky Julenburg. have corroborated that the haemato-crystalline maybe released from the deadly grasp of carbonic oxide by means of carbonic acid, hydrogen and oxygen, being persistently passed through a solution of carbonic oxide haemato-cryst., so that the blood band of sftokes and finally the two bands of oxy-haemato- cryst. may be'reproduced. Whether such a process would suc- ceed, in case of blood saturated with nitrous oxide, whose grasp upon the oxygen of the blood is far more tenacious, is a question which cannot be answered at present. NITROUS OXIDE GAS. Let us begin with this gas, the so called laughing gas, the one so extensively used by surgeons and dentists, and by many con- sidered a serviceable and harmless agent. It has been demonstrated by Herrman and verified by Hoppe Seyler, Gourp Besonez and W. Preyer, that Nitrous oxide gas possesses a very keen affinity for oxidized blood as well as for artificial oxy-haemato-crystalline in solution. The affinity is so