Anœsthetics.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 6, 1 April 1907, Page 217

Anœsthetics.

For every death which occurs under an anaesthetic (says St. James's Budget), thousands of operations are successfully performed ; but that one death acts with tremendous force upon the popular mind, and hospital surgeons find the greatest reluctance in their patients to submit to the treatment necessary. It will come, then, as a shock to a number of people to find that the properties of the new anaesthetic, ethyl-chloride, have no^been fully understood by all who have administered it. Last year a friend of this writer, having felt the parn of tooth extraction while under the influence of the ordinary gas, was persuaded to try the new one " Absolutely no danger • this one is safer than the old," the patient was assured by the dentist m question. The fact is, that dentist had taken ethylchloride as much on trust as did the man who had lust died under it The operation in this case was successful in every respect, but nevertheless one feels a grudge against the dentist who had taken the anaesthetic on trust. To the lay mind it appears that there should be some official test of anaesthetics be f ore practitioners are allowed to employ them upon their patients. The desirableness of experience as against theory is exemplified in the career of Sir Jam^s Simpson, the pioneer of anaesthetics He went into Lyor> Playfair's laboiatory one day and asked if he had any new substance likely to produce anaesthesia. Playfair had lust been experimenting with a volatile liquid, bromide of ethylme, which he thought worthy of investigation. Simpson proposed to try it then and there upon himself, but Play fair insisted that rabbits should first be experimented upon. Two were placed under the influence of the anaesthetic, and duly came round. Next day Simpson made up his mind to try the effects himself. " First let us see how the rabbits have fared " said Play fair. He found that both had died from the after effects. That trial had saved the life of the greatest physician of his age