BANISHING PAIN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 600, 3 August 1933, Page 3

BANISHING PAIN

USE OF ANAESTHESIA KNOWLEDGE OF ANCIENTS APPLIED BY SCIENCE. INTERESTING DISCOVERIES. Steps taken hy the medical and dental professions over a long period in pursuit the great goal of the banishment of pain, were outlmed hy Mr. W. Hunter Hamilton in an address to the New Plymouth Rotary Club recently on the subject of "Anaesthesia." He mentioned in opening that many of the most important discoveries that had led up to the present knowledge of anaesthesia, had been made by den'tists. Anaesthesia, he said, was known in various forms amongst the aneients. The Egyptians and the Arabians, wonderfully scientific peoples, had their forms of anaesthesia. Hypnotism was a well known phenomenon to them, and in various places we read of their use of the power of the will to banish the sensation of pain. Their surgery was really marvellous, considering all things. Then again they were conversant with & numher of drugs causing sleep. The Romans used mandrake, but not so much for the purpose of operating as for quietening condemned criminals before execution. The Chinese also knew of several drugs, and what is more, used them i extensively. Hasheesh was used by them, and also by the Indians. Influence o'f Cold. Intense cold was realised to produce a form of local anaesthesia many cenj turies ago, and this is occasionally made use of to-day, though very un- | frequently. The application of cold and freezing mixtures and rapidly evaporating drugs, giving much the same sensation one received on spilling benzine on the hand, produced a very marked constriction on the blood vessels, and a consequent loss of feelI ing, making it possible to perform minor, surface operations. Tooth exi tractions were frequantly dorie by that i means. Then again the mechanical ] constriction of blood vessels caused a certain amount of anaesthesia to the part supplied, :and that fact was made use of by both the Arabians and the Egyptians. Again, in Arabia the pressure on certain nerve tracts was known to give a loss of painful sensaj tion. They knew their anatomy well, J did the Arabs, and made full use of | their knowledge. j All these were used fairly extensive- ■ ly in the past, even up to the days of the middle of last century. But in ( almost every case the risk of damage through the necessary pressure, and I the poor healing subsequently, made surgeons very chary of their use. In

fact, in general practice we may say j j that to all intents and purposes anaes. | thesia was dis carded. j Speaking of general anaesthesia, Mr. Hamilton said that right back in j 1799, Sir Humphrey Davy realised j that nitrous oxide relieved pain, and ; actually suggested its use as an anaes- : thetic. He apparently did not produce i full anaesthesia, but a condition more ! akin to analgesia as we now know it. However, the suggestion was apparently shelved. In 1818, Faraday experimented with ether and described the effects as similar to those of nitrous oxide. | Experiments with Ether. But it was in the year 1842 that a medical practitioner named Crawford W. Long, of Georgia, learnt that his negro servant had been rendered unconscious by inhaling ether under compusion of his companions. Long claimed to have used the drug for anaesthetic purposes, but he kept very discreetly quiet about it, until he realised the great honour of discovering its use was beihg claimed by another. Long claimed to have removed a small tumour from the neck of a patient under the influence of ether in Mayi 1842. But his first account of the experiment was not published until 1849, three years after Morton, a dentist, had published his findings. So that apparently it is to Morton that the credit must be given. Morton had actually been experimenting with nitrous oxide, but was disappointed in his results, and decided to rtansfer his attentions to ether. He used "chloric ether" with I disappointing results and was advised I by a friend to buy sulphuric ether. He was more satisfied with this and experimented largely on animals. _ The story is that he was on the point of administering the ether to himself for the purpose of having tooth extractions when the door bell rang, and Eban Frost, with his fa.ee bound up in numerous scarves entered and asked Morton if he would mesmerise him and extract his tooth. Morton suggested using ether, as it was superior to hypnotism. He must have been a good salesman, for Frost consented. The tooth was extracted, the patient f ortunately recovered, much to his own (and doubtless Morton's) gratification and elation. No pain had been felt at all. That was in September, 1846. In October of the same year, a surgeon named Warren gave Morton the opportunity of administering ether to a patient for whom a vascular tumour was to be removed. Again both anaesthetic and operation were successful. Nitrous Oxide Progress. R In December, 1844, a dentist named Horace Wells, of the U.S.A., was was struck by certain remarks made in the course of a lecture by a chemist of the name of Colton, who -was administering nitrous oxide to a member of his audience. The young man became excited and ran about, falling over a stool and bruising himself. After regaining consciousness he remem_ bered nothiing of the accident and remembered no pain. The significancc of this struck Wells and within a few

days he, very bravely, submitted himself as a patient for the extraetion of an aching tooth. The operation was a great success and Wells, we read, was greatly elated. No wonder. He repeated his experiment) on several others and eommenced to manufacture nitrous oxide. In 1845 Wells went to Boston to demonstrate his discovery, and there called upon Morton. He and Morton repaired to the hospital and there attempted unsuccessfully to anaesthetise a patient. The audience composed mostly of medical students, were very frank in their expressions of approval, and Wells, apparently being rather susceptible to criticism, almost abandoned his ideas. At the same time it is to Wells that credit must he given for performijn^g thie fi^st operatipn under N20. He died in i848. In 1867, the man Colton, at whose lecture Wellaf had been, took it upon himself to revive the interest in N20, and he demonstrated his apparatus in both Paris and New York. From then on the use of nitrous oxide has been increasingly in favour. Thanks to two men, Andrews and Clover, both of U.S.A., the use of oxygen in conjunction with N20 was thought of, thus removing several alarming features. The modern dental nitrous oxide and oxygen apparatus is an exceptionally safe and fool proof piece of mechanism. In the last few years in fact, more and major surgery is being performed under its influence. This is, I think, almost the safest means of securing surgieal anaesthesia. Chloroform in England. In 1847, an Englisnman, Simpson, first introduced chloroform as an anaesthetic agent. It was suggested . to h'im by a chemist named Waldie, of t Liverpool. In November of that year i a demonstration was arranged at the I Royal Infirmary, and Simpson was to I administer the chloroform. UnfortuI nately, or fortunately as the case may be, Simpson was late, and the surgeon j carried on without him. The patient ! died on the table. It is possible that ' had Simpson been in time and ad- | ministered the anaesthetic and the j outcome been the same, the use of j chloroform would have been put back j for at least a number of years. As it was a second clinic was arranged, and was a huge success. Apparently the ' patient this time recovered. It is of interest to know that Simpson made himself very unpopular through his discovery. He had a large midwifery practice and made extensive use of chloroform during childbirth and was bitterly rebuked by the ministers of the day. Simpson lived until 1870, to be honoured by his counI try. In Westminster Abbey is this inscription upon his bust "To whose ! genius and benevolence the world owes . the blessings derived from the use of

chloroform for the relief of suffering." Local Anaesthesia. He had mentioned cold and pressure, as giving rise to forms of local loss of sensation. In addition to these, various drugs were in use. Numerous lotions were tried, and many. superstitions surrounded the combating of pain. In 1855, electricity was tried in conjunction with drugs, but apparently suggestion played the bigger part in any success. In 1845 the hypodermic syringe was first evolved, and, through its use, it was possible to inject certain drugs to the seat of pain. Morphine was the first drug to be injected, and shortly afterwards a man called Wood injected chloroform, but that caused greater pain than the operation itself. He claimed that morphine caused a local anaesthesia, but they know now that the result was through the general effect and. not the local. Various writers on South America had mentioned the fact that the natives there chewed a. certain leaf which relieved the pangs of hunger and gave them a f eeling of great stamina. From this plant the drug coeaine was eventually derived. Koller, in 1884, intro'duced the drug as a local anaesthetic, prineipally in the eye, throat and larynx. It was in 1855 that the active principle of the coco plant was discovered, and in 1860 Nieman gave it the term cocaine. It was used extensively from then on, but eventually the number of fatalities attributed to it became rather large, and its toxic properties were becoming known. Since then substitutes had been discovered and cocaine had largely fallen into disuse.