TRIUMPH OVER PAIN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 18 January 1939, Page 4

TRIUMPH OVER PAIN

In a hook entitled “Triumph Over Pain,” M. Rene Fulop-Miller tells the story of anaesthetics. Ether was known even so far back as the thirteenth century. Bombastus Paracelus, finding that the 'sweet vitriol” could put chickens to sleep, recommended its use in painful diseases. A century later ether attracted the uteutiou of Newton, but it was again forgotten for another hundred years till it cropped up in connection with the treatment of asthma and other lung conditions by gas inhalations, among which was the gas first discovered by Priestly and further expioitd by Humphry Davy—nitrous oxide, or "laughing gas.” Three people suffered ridicule for the suggestion ibat laughing gas might open a new era of medicine by its pam dispelling properties—Priestly, Davy and a country doe. and lectures on laughing gas emerged finally the great discovery which, within a few months of the performance of the fir.-t painless major operation at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846, swept the world. Mr James Simpson at Edinburgh fared little better with chloroform. Ho had to face the Interest religious opposition.