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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    some rare and extraordinary time, the unconsciousness of artificial sleep, when there is a great and laudable object in view,—viz. the avoidance of excruciating corporeal suffering, and the saving of human life, by saving the human system from the shock and dangers accompany- ing that suffering.* Besides those that urge, on a kind of religious ground, that an artificial or anaesthetic state of unconsciousness should not be induced merely to save frail humanity from the miseries and tortures of bodily pain, forget that we have the greatest of all examples set before us for following out this very principle of practice. I allude to that most singular description of the preliminaries and details of the first surgical opera- tion ever performed on man, which is contained in Genesis ii. 21 :— And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam ; and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. In this remarkable verse the whole process of a surgi- cal operation is briefly detailed. But the passage is principally striking, as affording evidence of our Creator himself using means to save poor human nature from the unnecessary endurance of physical pain. It ought to be noted (observes Calvin in his commentary on this verse), that Adam was sunk into a profound sleep, in order that he might feel no pain.f In his collected commentaries on the same verse, Pool quotes * See evidence of its saving human life, as well as saving human suffering, under surgical operations, in a table which I have given of the results of amputations with and without etherization, at p. 11 of Kemarks on the Superinduction of Anaesthesia in Natural and Morbid Parturition. f Notandum, Adam profundo sopore fuisse demersum, ut nihil doloris sentiret.—Johannis Calvini in Libruni Geneseos Commentarius (Hengstenberg's Edit. p. 36).