VOL. XXXVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 439 



try any experiment to preserve his life. We directly set about the operation ; 

 which was done with such success, that in less than 4 days, his breathing being 

 perfectly easy, and his deglutition being almost so, we removed the cannula, 

 and left the glottis to do its own office. 



In the very cutting, before we got a free aperture into the trachea, and the 

 pipe introduced, the patient felt some relief, which might be ascribed to the 

 effusion of blood in the operation ; a small quantity of which evacuated so near 

 tlie part affected, could not but make a more considerable revulsion, than a 

 much greater taken away at a great distance. Whence the judicious Fabricus 

 ab Aquapendente, p. 480, with very good reason supposed that by the deriva- 

 tion here, the patient would be more apt to feel some relief than trouble. And 

 since there continued a greater flux of blood to the wound while it was sup- 

 purating, the circulation in the muscles of the larynx might be with less force 

 than ordinary, and so probably contributed to diminishing the strength of the 

 voice, which for a good many days after the operation, was observed to be 

 much weaker than it used to be. 



In performing the operation on a living person, one cannot but remark at the 

 very first, that the cannula should not be made near so short as is usually pro- 

 posed in books and surgical lectures : for we found that on cutting the parts, 

 especially the thyroid gland, they soon become so much tumefied, that it re- 

 quires a pipe above an inch long, to penetrate sufficiently into the aspera arteria. 

 Which is more than double of Garangeot's allowance of 6 lines; who is one of 

 the most recent writers, and has communicated to us all the surgery the French 

 are masters of. The leaden pipe we had prepared not answering the design, 

 that which we made use of was too long and too small, being the common 

 cannula for tapping in the dropsy, flattened a little at the end, and hindered by 

 a very thick compress, perforated in the middle, from penetrating too deep into 

 the trachea. 



The mucous particles and streams arising from the lungs, made a constant 

 weeping of a thin slavery liquor from the mouth of the pipe, part of which 

 thickening, and stuffing its cavity, sometimes very much incommoded the 

 patient's respiration by it, so as to render it necessary to have it taken out and 

 cleaned. And hence, when some moderns very precisely tell us to put a thin 

 slice of sponge, or a bit of muslin, &c. close over the orifice of the cannula, 

 to prevent the ingress of dust, downs, or the like, into the lungs; it confirms 

 us of the unusualness of the operation, and looks as if they had only contem- 

 plated the matter in abstracto, as the metaphysicians say, without considering 

 they had not to do with a pure thin dry air, but with a heterogeneous fluid, 

 that is moistened and thickened with viscid particles, which are apt to run to- 



