A manual of nitrous oxide anaesthesia for the use of students and general practitioners / by J. Fredk. W. Silk.

  • Silk, J. Fredk. W. (John Frederick William), 1858-1943.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of nitrous oxide anaesthesia for the use of students and general practitioners / by J. Fredk. W. Silk. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    1799, who, although not going so far as to submit to any surgical operation while under its influence, inhaled the gas freely to assuage the pain consequent upon cutting a wisdom tooth ;* but although Sir H. Davy very shrewdly raised the question of its possible use as an anaesthetic in surgical operations, the gas was better known from the excitement it produced, and hence the term laughing gas, which was usually applied to it. In the experiments as then conducted, the gas was simply inhaled from a bag or bottle, through a tube held between the teeth, and no precautions were taken to exclude air. Thus, although the anaesthetic properties were fairly established, the difficulties in the way of their application, on account of the intensity of the preliminary excitement, pre- cluded the possibility of its practical use. Matters remained in this state for the next forty-four years. In 1844, Mr. Horace Wells, a dentist of Hartford, Connecticut, was again induced to try its effect in dentistry, and at first with considerable success, but in consequence of one or two failures this success was not permanent, and its use did not become general, more especially as men's minds were at that time much occupied by the discovery and application of chloroform and ether for anaesthetic purposes. But although placed in the background, it was by no means discarded. In 1848 the first surgical operation under its influence (an excision of the breast) was performed by Dr. H. J. Bigelow, and is reported in the Boston Medical Journal, Vol. I, p. 17. In 1867, Dr. G. Q, Colton (an American dentist, and for many years previously its most earnest advocate in the States) proceeded to Paris, and mainly in consequence of the * Collected Works, Vol. Ill, p. 276.