THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 80 1 



biped or quadruped — or participated in a scuffle of that sort, can doubt 

 that the excitement of the fight temporarily blunts the feeling of pain. 

 Count Ranzau, the " Streit-Hans " — " Rowdy Jack," as his comrades 

 used to call him — once received three dagger-stabs before he knew 

 that he was wounded at all. Soldiers, storming a battery, have often 

 suddenly broken down from the effects of wounds which they had 

 either not felt, or suspected only from a growing feeling of exhaustion. 

 Olaf Rygh, the Norwegian Herodotus, tells us that, when the old 

 Baresarks felt the approach of their end, they robbed death of its sting 

 by drifting out to sea in a scuttled or burning boat, and thus expired, 

 " screaming the wild battle-songs of their tribe." The Roman gladia- 

 tors shouted and laughed aloud while their wounds were being dressed. 

 A scalded child sobs and gasps for a therapeutical purpose : instinct 

 teaches it the readiest way to benumb the feeling of pain. The physi- 

 ological rationale of all this is that rapid breathing is an anoBsthetic. 

 In a paper read before the Philadelphia Medical Society, May 12, 1880, 

 Dr. W. A. Bonwill ascribes that effect to the influence of the surplus 

 of oxygen which is thus forced upon the lungs, just as by the inhala- 

 tion of nitrous-oxide gas (which is composed of the same elements as 

 common air, but with a larger proportion of oxygen), and mentions a 

 large variety of cases in his own practice where rapid breathing pro- 

 duced all the essential effects of a chemical pain-obtunder, without 

 appreciably diminishing the consciousness of the patient. Persons, 

 who object to the use of chloroform (perhaps from an instinctive dread 

 that in their case the ether-slumber might prove a sleep that knows no 

 waking), can benumb their nerves during the progress of a surgical 

 operation by gasping as deeply and as rapidly as possible. " One of 

 the most marked proofs of its efficacy," says Dr. Bonwill, "was the 

 case of a boy of eleven years of age for whom I had to extract the 

 upper and lower first permanent molars on both sides. He breathed 

 rapidly for nearly a minute, when I removed in about twenty seconds 

 all four of the teeth. He declared there was no pain, and we needed no 

 such assertion, for there was not the slightest indication that he was 

 undergoing a severe operation." 



The administration of chloroform often produces distressing after- 

 effects, nausea and sick-headaches, that sometimes continue for days 

 together ; and I remember two instances in the records of a French 

 military hospital where it resulted fatally in the case of patients who 

 had in vain protested and offered to forego the benefits of the anaes- 

 thetic — perhaps actually from an instinctive consciousness of some 

 constitutional peculiarity which in their case increased the risks of its 

 use. Ether-spray, on the other hand, is a legitimate application of the 

 principle that cold benumbs the feeling of pain. Death by freezing is 

 preceded by an absolute anaesthesia ; and the painfulness of bruises, 

 wasp-stings, etc., can be diminished by the topical application of an 

 ice-poultice. 



VOL. XXIT. — 51 



