BEFORE CHLOROFORM.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 841, 13 June 1910, Page 11

BEFORE CHLOROFORM.

SURGERY FIFTY. YEARS AGO.

. •'When I began tho study of medicine in 1847, says Dr. Abraham Jacobi, a prominent octogenarian American physician, post mortems were considered by many doctors to be the main thing, and their am/ bitioirwas to find out how the. patient died, not to cure him. . The ' Vienna school of medicine was in vogue, and its high priests -considered that the idealpatient was the one who was satisfied to be examined before .death by Skoda and after death by Kokitansky. A well known professor of medicine, Dietl, said that "the physician should be judged by the extent of his knowledgo and not by tho extent of his cures. Our power is in knowledge, not in deeds." ■ There was certainly a scarcity of deeds, whether or not there was a plethora of knowledge. Various srstemn flourished, like that of Brown,'. who thought that every, disease was the result of excitement or depression and gave drugs accordingly. Then there was the homoepalliic doctrine that the less the medicine the greater its power, and drugs wuro administered- in fifty-thou-sandth dilution of their strength. All apothecaries kept leeches, and a doctor always had a lancet in his vest pockel; so that he could bleed patients with expedition. To let blood was the golden rule in.the treatment of inflammatory diseases. It is well known that Uvour tho Italian .-statesman, was bled to death by his physicians in ISGI. No one dared to open windows and give fresh air to patients in feverish diseases Oxygen was regarded as poison for victims of pneumonia. Cold, water Was given sparingly as a drink and in its place the nastiest hot.drinks, like.camomile tea, were' administered. ■ burgory performed without anaesturtles until, m 1817, Dr. Morton, -an American, discovered ether. This anaesthetic was introduced as a proprietary article, but tho profession compelled tho inventor to give up the secret and the monopoly of an indispensable drug. Opium had been used to stupefy the .patient in place of a complete anaesthetic. I saw many operations without anaesthetics. I operated in 1851 with chloroform in a clinical test examination. Of course, the major operations common' to-day, abdominal and so forth, were impossible without anaesthesia, ■ for no patient could havo lived under the shock and pain, not to mention the lack of absolute quiescence necessary in fine operations. It was bad enough to have a leg taken off While consciousness remained. In order to minimise pain the old-time surgeon tried to work with lightning speed. My old teacher, Laiigenbeck, was going to amputate a leg, and an English surgeon was on hand to sec (he operation. As the surgeon grasped the knife tho stranger took out his spectacles and started to nut them on so as to watch tho operation, but before the spectacles were, on his nose the leg was off.. To-day not speed but safety is required in operations.. Asepsis and tho use of antiseptics —surgical cleanliness—have been' bic factors in tho marvellous development of surgery. "Before O'Dwyer, ono of tho few patient Americans; invented his windpipe tube for croup and diptheria, thousands of children had their throats slit open in tho operation of tracheotomy. A celebrated physician once told me that this terriblo operation as performed in the old days used to unnerve him completely. In Britain the discoveries of Simpson and Lister have led to an enormous gain in the treatment of sickness and disease.