Experiments with inhalation anesthetics

Anesthesiology EXPERIMENTS

N

ITItOl?S

WITH

INHALATION

ANESTHETICS

too long llas tlmt been ;I(‘is the safest ancst hetic*. For 1);. specialists in anesthesia. by many, but not, howerer, They know better, as their comparatirely infrcyurnt resort, to it shows. Recent years have brought a salutary rebirth of interest in anoxemia which Psychopathologic effects hare been emphaOCCL~ in nitrous oxide anesthesia. sized. This is nothing new. Zcigler in 1861, in an article in the Denial C~USWOS, said its administration will produce “suI,erosidation, disintegration, even to softening of the brain. ” However, Beddocs, more than fifty years earlier, administered it to cure tuberculosis. C’rile found beneficial effects from its use in surgery on soldiers who had gone without, sleep for long periods. The recent critics of nitrous oxide woul~l have us administer no less than Twenty per cent oxygen with nilrons oxide is safer than 20 per cent oxygen. 6 or 7 per cent. The trouble is that you will seldom get anesthesia that way. The wish is father to the thought. But the properties oi’ the gases must, not bc overlooked. ceptetl

oxide

as

true

Before 1 give the results of my animal experiments thesia, it is well that I relate briefly these findings to p?3c~ticill, applicat,ion : Ttem 1, the apparatus. Ttem 2, the human patient

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Item l.-Courville reported a case of rcspiratorv failure, muscular twitchTwo other crises ings, deepening coma, and death after forty-three hours. It xvvas subsequently presented similar findings with the saItlc ;Il>l)araIus. found that the valve controlli~lg the l)ercentagr of oxygen and Ilitrous ositlc k’or csample, when t.hr permitted a most irregular admixture of 1hese gasp indicaltor was set at 8% l)er cent nitrous oxide ant1 l,i per cent oxygen, pramtically l)are nitrous oxide was being delircrctl. A number of years ago, with the LW of a gasoljtetcr and with laboratorS analysis, 1. testctl many ancst,hesia mnchincs. &I\- fintlings were it general indictment of all then in use. With the 1~~11)of I)t*. F’oregger and the ITnion This Carbon and (‘arhitle (‘oltlpany. 1 flowetl the gases least columns of water. l~‘nrther tests fount1 t.his later tlcveloped into the “T~‘~ow~I~c~c~“’ principle. absolutely reliable (Fig. 1).

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