Miscellany. [Volume: 2, Issue: 8, March, 1861, pp. 465-472]

PERISCOPE OF MEDICAL AND GENERAL SCIENCE.

465

"Churchill gives three stages: First, a stage of excitement; then
follows calm sleep, and then stupor.
"In Druitt's Surgery we also find three stages or degrees of action
given. The first 'is merely a pleasureable feeling of half intoxication;
the second is one of extreme pleasure, being similar to the sensation of
breathing nitrous oxide gas; there exists in this stage a perfect consciousness of everything said or done, but generally an impossibility of
motion; in this stage, also, there is not exactly an insensibility to pain,
but rather an indifference, a care-for-nothing sort of feeling, and if surgical operations be performed in this stage, the patients almost always
recover before the operation is completed, and the results are unsatisfactory. The third degree is one of profound intoxication and insensibility; the individual is completely lost to external impressions; the muscles
become prostrate, the circulation lessens, and the temperature falls.'
"The order in which the different parts of the nervous system become
affected during the inhalation of choloroform, is stated to be as follows:
First, the cerebral lobes; next, the cerebellum; third, the spinal marrow;
and, finally, the medulla oblongata, which is, of course, soon followed by
death. This is, no doubt, the general mode or order of its action, yet it
may influence one part of the brain in one subject, and in another act
primarily on a different portion of the nervous mass, and the results be
very different. Thus Meigs, in his work on Obstetrics, says, in regard to
the action of ether and chloroform, that 'the statements show that the
power of these anaesthetics is capable of abolishing the sensibility, without greatly interfering with the motor power of the subject, or it may
abolish the motor power, and allow the sensitive power to be acute as in
health. The inhalation may produce anesthesia of the thinking brain,
yet have the co-ordinating breathing and seeing brains intact, or it may
put a temporary end to the power of the cerebellum and tubercula quadrigemina, without influencing the other parts of the encephalon.' At
other times the whole force of vapor inhaled seems to be directed to the
nerves of the heart, and death results from syncope; nor does it seem to
depend on the amount used, or the degree of dilution with air, but depends probably, as is stated by Prof. Wood, 'on some idiosyncrasy of the
patient, in the same way that one grain of calomel will sometimes salivate.'
And as there is no way of telling before its use what the effect may be, it
is a matter of paramount importance that its administration be carefully
watched, and its exhibition suspended at the first unfavorable symptom,
such as failure of the pulse, stertorous breathing, etc., and it is absolutely
necessary that its administration be entrusted only to competent hands."
MISCELLANY.
THE British and Foreign Med.- Chir. 1Rev. gives the following resume
of some "experimental researches on various questions concerning sensibility. Brown-Sequard has examined how long sensibility lasts in parts
of the body deprived of the circulation of the blood, by applying ligatures
on the femoral artery of animals; and after having divided this vessel between the ligatures, amputating the thigh completely, with the exception
of the two large nerves. The author thus found the duration of sensibility in the toes of rabbits to vary between twenty and twenty-three
minutes; in guinea-pigs, between forty and fifty minutes, sometimes even
more than an hour; in dogs, between thirty and thirty-five minutes.