BEFORE CHLOROFORM.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 161, 9 July 1910, Page 13

BEFORE CHLOROFORM.

SURGERY FIFTY TEAKS AGO. Wihen I began the stndy of. medicine In 1&17, says Dr. Abraham Jacobl,' a prominent octogenarian Transatlantic, physician, post mortems were considered by many doctors to be the main thing, and their ambition was to find out liow the patient died, not to cure him. The Vienna school of medicine was in vogue, and its high priests considered that the Ideal patient was the one who was satisfied to be examined before death by Skoda and after death by Rokltansky. A well known professor of medicine, Dletl, said that "the physician should be judged by the extent of his knowledge and not by the extent of his cures. Our power is in knowledge, not in deeds." LEECHES AND IjA^CEZDS. There was certainly a scarcity of deeds, whether or not there was a plethora of knowledge. Various systems flourished, like that of Brown, who thought that every disease was the result of excitement" or* depression aud gave drugs accordingly. Then there was the homoeopathic doctrine that the less medicine the greater its power, and drugs were administered in flfty-thousandth dilution of their strength. All apothecaries kept leeches, and a doctor always had a lancet in his vest pocket so that he could bleed patients with expedition. To let blood was the golden rule in the treatment of inflammatory dts- i eases. -It is well known that Cavour, the j Italian statesman, was bled to death by his physicians in 1801. No one claied to open windows and give fresh : air to patients in feverish diseases, i 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. •- - Snrgery was performed without anaesthetics until, iv 1847, Dr. Morton, an American, discovered ether. This anaesthetic was introduced as a proprietary article, but the profession compelled the 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 anaes'chetlc: I saw many operations without anaesthetics. I operated in ISSI with, chloroform in a clinical test examination. OPERATIONS WITHOUT ANAESTHETICS. . ;Of course, the major operations common to-day, abdominal and so forth, were impossible without anaesthesia, for no patient could have 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 wieti lightning speed. My old teacher, Langenbeck, was going to amputate a leg, and an English surgeon was on. hand to see the operation, . As the surgeon grasped the knife the stranger took out his spectacles and started to put them on so as to watch, the operation, but before the spectacles ! were on his nose the leg was off. To-day! not speed but safety Is required in opera-j tions. Asepsis! and the use of antiseptics | —surgical cleanliness—have been big. factors in the marvellous development of surgery! ' •.'". \.' "Before O'Dwyer, one of the few patient Americans, invented his windpipe tube for croup and diphtheria, thousands of children had their throats silt open in the operation of tracheotomy. A celebrated • physician once told mc that this terrible operation as' performed in the old days used to unnerve him completely. •.' . In this country the discoveries of Simpson and Lister have led to an: enormous gain in the treatment-of sickness and.dis-. ease. .