﻿CHAPTER I. 



Historical. 



He 



Lorace Wells from Hartfort in Connecticut is to be regarded as the discoverer 

 of anaesthesia. As a dentist he assisted at a chemical lecture on the nitrogen- 

 compounds Dec. 10th 1844. During the demonstration one of the assistents received 

 a dose of nitrous-oxide {N^O "laughing-gas") and in his intoxicated condition he 

 fell down and hurt his legs. In answer to Wells' question he replied that he had 

 felt no pain. Hence Wells got the idea that the insensibility produced by the 

 nitrous-oxide might prove useful in dentistry. The discovery of surgical anaesthesia 

 must be looked upon as dating from this moment. Later other anaesthetics were 

 experimented with, among the latter experiments were made with ether and in 

 1846 the first operation of a patient narcotized by ether was undertaken. [Riebet, 

 1895, p. 513]. 



The influence of anaesthetics on the irritability of plants was examined for 

 the first time in 1847 by Clemens and in 1848 by Marcet who succeeded in 

 suspending the irritability of the pulvini of Mimosa pudica through chloroform 

 [Kegel 1905]. A few years later Leclerc, the French physiologist, tried to prove a 

 nervous system of the plants and in conformity with the theory, which then pre- 

 vailed, that only nervine tissue can be affected by anaesthetics' he concluded that 

 Mimosa pudica possesses a nervous system having observed that the above men- 

 tioned plant loses its irritability in an atmosphere of ether. If exposed to sun- 

 shine the plant lost its irritability after a lapse of 10 to 15 minutes, while its loss 

 of irritability did not take place until at least an hour after it had been exposed 

 to diffuse daylight. 



Transferred to normal surroundings the plant regained its irritability provided 

 that the exposure to ether had not lasted too long. And when he found through 

 experiments that he was able to suspend the irritability of a single organ without 

 affecting the other parts of the plant he concluded that the plant it not a single 

 individual but a whole colony, a point which was moot at the time. [Leclerc 

 1853, p. 526-528]. 



' Claude Bernard proved for the first time that all sorts of tissues may be affected by narcotics. 

 - Later on Claude Bernard has also observed this phenomenon and at the same time he noted 

 that heightened temperature increases the action of ether. 



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