Handbook of anæsthetics

Reaching the blood stream by absorption from the lung alveoli, the drug enters into loose combination with the red blood corpuscles; a small proportion only is carried in the pl...

Under this short and convenient title, the author proposes to discuss all the changes observable in the patient’s condition, the causation of which can be traced to the procedur...

Some degree of asphyxia is a common complication of inhalational anæsthesia: indeed some small degree of it is almost unavoidable. It is hardly too much to say that the differen...

The OPEN METHOD is one in which the drug is dropped or poured upon a fabric stretched on a mask which does not lie in close apposition to the face. If the student will experimen...

Anæsthesia has been divided into four clinical stages corresponding to the degrees to which the nervous system has been affected. The boundaries between these stages are often i...

For all but short anæsthesias conducted chiefly by nitrous oxide, the intestinal tract of the patient must receive careful preparation. In doing this, one must avoid excessive s...

Upon the nervous system, nitrous oxide acts like other anæsthetics, but the stages of anæsthesia are passed through so rapidly that a second stage can hardly be distinguished. I...

The account given in the previous chapter of anæsthesia by nitrous oxide and air will have convinced the student that it is a somewhat inelegant method with a limited sphere of...

The drug commonly known as ether and otherwise described as ethylic ether or sulphuric ether, has a chemical formula (C_{2}H_{5})_{2}O. It is a transparent colourless fluid with...

Intratracheal insufflation consists in driving a current of air under pressure, through a tube introduced by way of the mouth and larynx, deeply into the trachea. The current of...

Chloroform is chemically trichlor-methane, CHCL_{3}. It is a colourless, transparent fluid, with a specific gravity of 1·491 at 17°C. Its vapour is even heavier than that of eth...

Chemically this drug has the formula C_{2}H_{5}Cl. It is a colourless fluid so volatile that it boils at ordinary room temperature. Its vapour is highly explosive, and the fluid...

Dr Guy, Dean of the Edinburgh Dental School, introduced some years ago a method of giving ethyl chloride in mixture with nitrous oxide. Guy’s objective was to utilise the many e...

The mere addition of ether does not remove all the undesirable features of chloroform anæsthesia. A heart poisoned by excess of CHCl_{3} does not respond to ether stimulation. N...

By a sequence we mean a method in which anæsthesia is partially or wholly induced by one anæsthetic or one method, and maintained by another. The methods mentioned in Chapter XI...

The minor difficulties of anæsthesia have already been dealt with, and if the instructions already given, particularly in Chapter III., are faithfully carried out, incidents of...

After operations performed under any form of anæsthesia, even spinal, there is always a possibility of pneumonia or bronchitis. The anæsthetic itself is not always to blame. The...

The position in which the patient is lying is of as much importance to the anæsthetist as to the surgeon. It is for the surgeon to say what he wants and for the anæsthetist to r...

In considering this matter, some repetition of points to which reference has already been made, is inevitable. Indeed, this chapter may be regarded as a revision of the whole su...

By the term local anæsthesia, or more correctly _local analgesia_, is meant the loss of sensibility to painful stimuli without loss of general consciousness. It may be induced i...

Spinal Anæsthesia or _Analgesia_, consists in the production of analgesia in the lower extremities and in the lower part of the trunk by the injection into the subarachnoid spac...