430 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



Great European War (191 4-1 91 8), and the intravenous 

 injection of drugs, originated by Christopher Wren about 

 1656, did not come into general use until Ehrhch's arsphena- 

 mine was employed about 19 10; Humphry Davy's discovery 

 in 1799 of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) as an anesthetic, 

 though demonstrated again in the following year at Guy's 

 Hospital by W. Allen, remained unutilized until Crawford W. 

 Long (1842), and the dentists Horace Wells (1845) ^^^ 

 WilHam Morton (1846) employed ether as an anesthetic, 

 and James Y. Simpson of Edinburgh introduced chloroform 

 in 1847. James Lind showed in 1754 how scurvy, which was a 

 constant and most serious cause of incapacity on long 

 voyages, could be prevented, but it was not until 1795 

 that this simple means was put into general use in the 

 Royal Navy of Great Britain and at once banished this 

 ancient scourge. Herbert Spencer instanced this long delay 

 of forty-one years which the Admiralty allowed to elapse 

 before acting on Lind's recommendation as an apt illustration 

 of the inertia and torpor of administrative bodies. Some 

 years passed before Lister's (1827-19 12) antiseptic method 

 (1868) conquered the conservative opposition in his own 

 country and transformed surgery, so that it may be regarded 

 as the greatest material benefit ever conferred on humanity. 

 The fight against childbed or puerperal fever, begun by 

 Charles White of Manchester in 1773, Alexander Gordon of 

 Aberdeen in 1795, Ohver Wendell Holmes of Boston in 

 1843, ^^d I- P- Semmelweis of Vienna in 1861, has saved 

 many Hves and, with the later knowledge of infection and 

 how to avoid it, should certainly be more successful in the 

 future. The last fifty years have seen the most notable 

 changes that have ever occurred in the history of surgery; 

 as the result of Lister's work operations on parts of the body 

 which previously were seldom attempted have become 

 commonplace, and the gain to humanity in freedom from 

 suffering and imminent death has been incalculable, for 

 example in conditions such as appendicitis, gallstones, 

 other abdominal diseases, and brain tumors, which were 

 previously too dangerous to remove and therefore were 

 treated by palliative measures only. 



