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Lancet, 1847/1. - London, George Churchill, 1847, 4°, 702 pp., Halbledereinband der Zeit. FIRST EDITION, and the first publication on this side of the Atlantic, of the first account of ether anaesthesia. The appearance of this paper in the Boston Medical & Surgical Journal some six weeks previously. This was thus the first account published in Europe of an operation performed with the aid of ether anaesthesia. "The original title "Insensibility during surgical operations produced by inhalation" as given in the Boston. Med. & Surg. J. was not given. Jacob Bigelow, the father of H.J. Bigelow, wrote on 28 November to Francis Boott of London telling him of Morton's discovery and enclosing the text of his son's communication as it had appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser. Boott forwarded Jacob Bigelow's letter and H. J. Bigelow's paper to The Lancet which published them both in their number for 2 January 1847. Appended to the reprint was a letter from Robert Liston to Dr. Boott dated 21 December 1846 saying that on that day he had successfully used ether during an amputation at the knee, thus recording the first operation under ether anaesthesia in Europe. Liston had learned of Bigelow's letter to Boott on Saturday, the 19th, and carried out his first operation on Monday, the 21st!" (Fulton & Stanton). The first reference to ether in the British press is a short paragraph in the London Medical Gazette for 18 December 1846, and the second is in The Lancet for 26 December. The two are evidently based on the same source, and are statements only (reprinted by Fulton & Stanton), rather than full accounts. In The Lancet for 9 January 1847, further correspondence (pp. 49-51) on Bigelow's patent is included, and in the issue for 16 January "a long and well written editorial appears excoriating both Jackson and Morton for attempting the patent" and pp. 77-80 give accounts of operations under anaesthesia, including an illustration of "Mr. Hooper's Ether Inhalator, constructed according to Dr. Boott and Mr. Robinson's Instructions". John F. Fulton & Madeline E. Stanton, The Centennial of Surgical Anesthesia, pp.36-39 Following other Milestones of Anesthesia we find in this rare volume: Plomley, Francis: Operations upon on the Eye (pp.134-135). "John Snow and AE. Guedel are known for assigning stages to anesthesia; the following article, by Francis Plomley, is an earlier description of these levels. The pretending on the part of the physicians that the already completed operation had not yet been undertaken typified the wonder that was associated with the newness of the invention; conservations like that described in the second paragraph are to be found in many early articles. Plomley's definition of the third stage is accurate. It is now felt, however, that in the second stage "three exists," as he says, "a perfect consciousness of everything said or done." His remarks in the final paragraph relating in this article to the site of action of the ether is interesting" Cole, Milestone of Anesthesia, Nr. 7 Wells, Horace: Fatal Operation under the Influence of Ether (pp.340-342). "The world owes much to Horace Wells (185-1848). He conceived the idea of surgical anesthesia, experimented on himselfe and others, and demonstrated anesthesia publicly for all to see. He succeeded in the sense that the failure of his demonstration was the failure of his audience to appreciate the earth-shaking nature of what they were being shown, and in the sense that the final success was an immediate and direct result if his work. He published fefenses in the United States, England, and France." Cole, Milestone of Anesthesia, Nr. 8 Snow, John: Apparatus for Inhaling the Vapour of Ether (pp.120-121, 1 Abb.); Observations of the Vapour of Ether, and its Application to Prevent Pain in Surgical Operations (pp.227-228); Ether Inhalation (pp.388-389); A Lecture on the Inhalation of Vapour of Ether in Surgical Operations, .
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