File:Triumphs and wonders of the 19th century, the true mirror of a phenomenal era, a volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous (14803535033).jpg

Identifier: triumphswonderso01boyd (find matches)
Title: Triumphs and wonders of the 19th century, the true mirror of a phenomenal era, a volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress ..
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Boyd, James Penny, 1836-1910
Subjects: Progress Inventions
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa., A. J. Holman & Co
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ng the time of the operation, but because it enabled the surgeonto work with greater exactness and less hurry. The conception of the anaes- THE CENTURYS ADVANCE IN SURGERY 617 thetic state did not, however, come into being for the first time in our cen-tury, for, like most great ideas, it agitated the minds of medical and scien-tific men for centuries. Gross tells us that Theodoric, in the thirteenthcentury, recommended the inhalation of a certain combination of opium,hemlock, and other vegetable derivatives for the purpose of producing sleep,and that in India similar combinations were for centuries in use. It is need-less, however, to say that the effect produced was nothing like that followingthe use of nitrous oxide, laughing gas, ether, or chloroform, and that theiruse never became general. Toward the close of the last century Sir Hum-phry Davy and others performed repeated experiments with nitrous oxidegas, but finally gave up in despair. In the early part of our own century sev-
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SURGICAL OPERATING ROOM, HOWARD HOSPITAL, PHILADELPHIA, PA. eral methods of producing insensibility to pain were recommended, such aspressure on nerves and bleeding to the degree of producing unconsciousness,but none of them was ever sufficiently successful to render their adoption gen-eral ; and it remained for a New England dentist, Dr. Horace Wells, in 1844,to first use satisfactorily upon himself aud his patients the complete state ofunconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide gas. This poor man, however,failed signally when he endeavored to demonstrate its powers before a bodyof medical men, and was subjected to the most unwarranted ridicule. How-ever, a pupil of this man, another dentist, named Morton, two years later,experimented with ether, and finally proved upon himself and on patientsthe wonderful power of the vapor. He exhibited his discovery at the Massa-chusetts General Hospital at Boston, where Dr. Warren performed an opera- 618 TRIUMPHS AND WONDERS OF THE XIX1 CENTURY ti

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