Parturition without Pain or Loss of Consciousness

Member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Fellow and Councillor of the Medical Society of London, F.L.S., Etc. Etc.
LONDON: JOHN W. DAVIES, 54, PRINCES STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE. EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN AND STEWART. DUBLIN: FANNIN AND CO. LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

A second edition of my little work being required at the expiration of only a few months is gratifying to me, as evidence that my views regarding the use of an Anodyne in Parturition have attracted considerable attention. I may take this opportunity of stating, that I have never had any intention of undervaluing the merits of others who have laboured in the field of anæsthetics, my only claim to attention consisting in the novelty of my mode of applying the agent, by which its effects are so remarkably modified.
When chloroform is administered in the usual way it is given slowly, and goes the round of the circulation before it relieves the pain or produces anæsthesia. Whereas, in my plan of using the anodyne, the rapidly repeated but interrupted impressions made on the nervous system produce the anodyne without the anæsthetic effect—before, indeed, the mass of the blood has become affected. In this consists all the originality to which I lay claim. I have used the word anodyne, instead of modified chloroform, in consequence of this peculiarity of its effects. I cannot but regard this as an improvement on the old plan of using chloroform—which relieved pain, it is true, but it produced loss of consciousness also, and was not unattended with danger.
2, Harleyford Place, Kennington, S., October, 1862.

The following remarks on the administration of an anæsthetic agent during parturition are reprinted from the Lancet . I have appended a series of Letters, illustrative of the efficacy of the mode of proceeding I adopt.
2, Harleyford Place, Kennington, S., June, 1862.