Remarks on the superinduction of anæsthesia in natural and morbid parturition : with cases illustrative of the effects of chloroform in midwifery; and answers to alleged religious objections against the practice / by J.Y. Simpson, M.D.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the superinduction of anæsthesia in natural and morbid parturition : with cases illustrative of the effects of chloroform in midwifery; and answers to alleged religious objections against the practice / by J.Y. Simpson, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    view of the subject, lie would certainly advise Mr Mil- ler not to heed them in his article. Dr Chalmers' mind was not one that could take up or harbour the extraordinary idea, that, under the Christian dispensa- tion, the God of Mercy should wish for, and delight in, the sacrifice of women's screams and sufferings in child- birth. Perhaps he thought also, as I have heard other clergymen state, that if God has beneficently vouch- safed to us a means of mitigating the agonies of child- birth, it is His evident intention that we should em- ploy these means. The very fact that we have the power by human measures to relieve the maternal suf- ferings, is in itself a sufficient criterion that God would rather that these sufferings be relieved and removed. If He had willed and desired them not to be averted, it would not be possible for man to avert them. For while it is our duty to avoid all misery and suffering that is avoidable, it would certainly be impossible for us to eschew any that God had permanently and irre- versibly decreed should not be eschewed. 7. I have heard objections urged against the state of anaesthesia as a counteraction to pain in surgery and midwifery, on other and different grounds from any which I have yet noticed, viz., that in superinducing a temporary absence of corporeal sensibility, we also superinduce, at the same time, a temporary absence of mental consciousness. And it is argued that, as medi- cal men, we are not entitled to put the activity and consciousness of the mind of any patient in abeyance, for the mere purpose of saving that patient from any bodily pain or agony. Some medical men even, have gravely pressed this argument. But if there were any propriety in it, why, then, these same medical men could never have been justified in doing what they