Manual of the discovery, manufacture, and administration of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas in its relations to dental or minor surgical operations, and particularly for the painless extraction of teeth / by F.R. Thomas.

  • Thomas, Frederick R.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of the discovery, manufacture, and administration of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas in its relations to dental or minor surgical operations, and particularly for the painless extraction of teeth / by F.R. Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    101/144 (page 95)
    Anaesthetics are agents which, when absorbed into the circulation, exert an influence upon the blood. They are shown to have the power of altering its 'physical character and physical properties. By an action upon its constituent (pro- teinous) elements, they tend to alter and, by a profounder action, to destroy its or- ganic molecules. Its physical perfection being interfered with, its function is held in abeyance; the changes which contrib- ute to constitute perfect life are retarded. Narcosis ensues, and is due, not to the influence of a circulating poison, but to the influence of an altered blood. * * * Narcotism (or, to speak more particu- larly, chloroform narcotism) is due not to a special poison ' tb at mounts up to the brain,' but to an altered blood. Then ^narcotism is a suspended oxygenation.*