Anaesthetic midwifery : report on its early history and progress / By J.Y. Simpson.

  • James Young Simpson
Date:
1848
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anaesthetic midwifery : report on its early history and progress / By J.Y. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    red on May 5, the other on May 15, 1847. Drs Clark,' Putnam,^ and other American practitioners, have latterly published the re- sults of their experience in anaesthetic midwifery. In November 1847, a new impulse was given to the practice of anaesthesia in midwifery, by the introduction of chloroform as a sub- stitute for sulphuric ether. The ether required to be exhibited in large quantities in order to keep up its action; and hence it was objectionable in ordinary obstetric practice from its bulk, and the inconvenience of its carriage. Most medical men believed that an apparatus of more or less considerable size was necessary for its proper and effectual exhibition, thus further encumbering the prac- titioner. These and other difficulties were found not to appertain to the use of chloroform, and many, in consequence, adopted it in midwifery, who had previously altogether rejected the employment of sulphuric ether. The first case of labour in which I employed chloroform occurred on the 8th of Novembei*. On the 1st Decem- ber, I reported to the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society a series of cases illustrative of its effects and use in natural and oper- ative labours.^ In the London weekly journals, since that period, Dr Protheroe Smith, Dr Murphy,^ Dr Rigby, Mr Lansdowne, Mr Brown, Dr Bennet, Mr Phillips, and others, have published cases and rejiorts upon the subject. RESULTS OF THE PRACTICE OF ANESTHESIA IN MIDWIFERY. Since January 1847, up to the present time, I have, in my own practice, deHvered about 150 patients under a state of anaesthesia. The results to the children and mothers have been as follows :— Resiilts to the Children.—In the 150 cases, all the children were bom alive except one. In this exceptional instance, the infant was expelled in a decomposed and putrid state, between the seventh and eighth month of utero-gestation. It had not been felt to move, nor had I been able to hear the foetal heart with the stethoscope, for two or three weeks previously. The mother had, before the present preg- nancy, borne several premature dead children. Though the infant was small, yet the suffering attending upon its expulsion offered to be excessive, and, to relieve the mother of this unnecessary agony, I placed her under the influence of chloroform. During the few weeks of my obstetric attendance after delivery American reprint of one of my Essays on Chloroform, has announced his inten- tion of soon publishing a volume On the Employment of Etherization in Childbirth. 1 Philadelphia Medical Examiner, March 1848. 2 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, February 2, 1848. 3 See Lancet for November 20, 1847, p. 5.33, and December 11, p. G13 ; also Medical Gazette for November 26, p. 934. * See also Dr Murphy's able Harveian Oration on the employment of Clilo- roforni.
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