PHOSPHORUS PILLS. 
615 
duced a useful anaesthesia by freezing through the agency of ether vapour, reducing the 
temperature to 6° below zero F., it occurred to me that a very volatile product o 
petroleum might he more sure to congeal the tissues, besides being far less expensive, 
than ether. Mr. Merrill having at my request manufactured a liquid of which the 
boiling-point was 70° F., it proved that the mercury,,was easily depressed by this agent 
to 19° below zero, and that the skin could be with certainty frozen hard in five or ten 
seconds. A lower temperature might doubtless be produced, were it not for the ice 
which surrounds the bulb of the thermometer. This result may be approxima e y 
effected by the common and familiar “ spray producer,”'"' the concentric tuoes of Dr. 
Richardson not being absolutely necessary to congeal the tissues with the rhigolene,. as 
in his experiments with common ether. I have for convenience used a. glass phial, 
through the cork of which passes a metal tube for the fluid, the air-tube being outside, 
and bent at its extremity so as to meet the fluid-tube at right angles, ad some instance 
from the neck of the bottle. Air is not admitted to the bottle as in Di. Richardsons 
apparatus, the vapour of the rhigolene generated by the warmth of the hand applied ex¬ 
ternally being sufficient to prevent a vacuum and to ensure its free delivery; lo below 
zero is easily produced by this apparatus. The bottle, when nothin use, should be kept 
tightly corked, a precaution by no means superfluous, as the liquid readily loses its more 
volatile parts by evaporation, leaving a denser and consequently less efficient residue, in 
this and in several more expensive forms of apparatus in metal, both with and without 
the concentric tubes, I have found the sizes of 72 and 78 of Stubs’s stee J wir ® 
work well for the air and fluid orifices respectively; and it may be added that metal 
points reduced to sharp edges are preferable to glass, which, by its non-conauctmg pro¬ 
perties, allows the orifices to become obstructed by frozen aqueous vapour. 
Freezing by rhigolene is far more sure than by ether, as suggested by Dr. Richardson, 
inasmuch as common ether, boiling only at about 96° instead of 70 , often fails to pro¬ 
duce an adequate degree of cold. ’Che rhigolene is more convenient and more easily 
controlled than the freezing mixtures hitherto employed. Being quick m its action, in¬ 
expensive and comparatively odourless, it will supersede general or local anaesthesia by 
ether or chloroform for small operations and in private houses. _ The opening of felons 
and other abscesses, the removal of small tumours, small incisions excisions and evu - 
sions, and perhaps the extraction of teeth, may be thus effected with admirable ease and 
certainty; and for these purposes surgeons will use it, as also, perhaps, for the relief oi 
neuralgia, chronic rheumatism, etc., and as a styptic, and for the destruction by freezing 
of erectile and other growths. But for large operations it is obviously less convenient 
than general anaesthesia, and will never supersede it. Applied to the skm, a first degree 
of congelation is evanescent; if protracted longer, it is followed by redness and desqua 
mation, which may be possibly averted by the local bleeding of an incision ; but if con¬ 
tinued or used on a large scale, the dangers of frost-bite and mortification must be 
It may be superfluous to add that both the liquid and the vapoui of rhigolene are 
highly inflammable. 
PHOSPHORUS PILLS. 
Dr. Radcliffe having tried various means of administering phosphorus, has at length 
succeeded in effecting this in the form of pills; and as other medical men aie now 
ordering phosphorus in this form, we have thought it desirable to publish the formula, 
for the information of our readers. 
Take of 
Phosphorus ... 6 grains. 
Suet.GOO grains. 
Melt the suet in a stoppered bottle capable of holding twice the quantity indicated; 
put in the phosphorus, land when liquid, agitate the mixture until it becomes solid; ro1 
into 3-grain pills, and cover with gelatine, liach pill will contain . of a grain of p 
phorus. 
* Bergson’s tube. 
