ANADOLI (Kreller, Nuremburg). An oriental tooth-powder. Powdered soap, 42 parts; starch powder, 44 parts; levantine soapwort, 12 parts; oil of bergamot and lemon to flavour. (Wittstein.)
ANÆMIA. Deficiency of blood.
ANÆSTHE′SIA (ăn-ēz-the′-zh′ă; -sh′ă; -thēze′y′ăr). [L.; prim. Gr.] Syn. Anesthésie, Fr. In pathology, diminished or lost sense of feeling.
In surgery and obstetrics, the production of temporary anæsthesia, for the purpose of rendering operations painless, relieving the pangs of childbirth, &c., is effected by the use of—
ANÆSTHET′ICS. Syn. Anæsthet′ica, L.; Anesthétiques, Fr. In pharmacology and surgery, substances or agents which diminish or destroy sensibility, or which relieve pain. In its full extent this term includes both anodynes and narcotics; but it is now more generally confined to those substances which greatly diminish common sensibility, or entirely remove susceptibility to pain. Among the most useful, safe, and powerful of this class are chloroform, ether, nitrous oxide, and intense cold; besides several chlorinated compounds, such as the bichlorides of ethylen, methylen, and carbon.
More than 1500 years ago the Chinese are said to have used a preparation of hemp, or ma-yo, to annul the pain attendant upon cauterisation and other surgical operations. Mandragora (mandrake) was employed for a similar purpose by the Greeks and Romans; and we learn that as early as the thirteenth century the vapour from a sponge filled with tinctures of mandragora, opium, and other sedatives was used for a similar purpose.
Baptista Porta, in his work on natural magic printed in 1597, mentions a quintessence extracted from medicines by somniferous menstrua, of the nature of which he leaves us in ignorance. This quintessence was to be preserved in leaden vessels very perfectly closed, lest the aura should escape, for the medicine would vanish away. Furthermore, he adds, “when it is used, the cover being
removed, it is applied to the nostrils of the sleeper, who draws in the most subtle power of the vapour by smelling, and so blocks up the fortress of the senses, that he is plunged into the most profound sleep, and cannot be roused without the greatest effort.” Dr Iron suggested that the volatile substance was sulphuric ether, which he says had been described more than fifty years before Porta wrote his book. In the year 1800 Sir Humphry Davy suggested the employment of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, as it was then termed, for minor operations in surgery, and in 1828 Dr Hickman proposed carbonic acid as an anæsthetic. The vapour of sulphuric ether had been used in his practice by Dr Pearson as early as 1795, for the relief of spasmodic asthma. The fact that sulphuric ether was capable of producing insensibility was demonstrated by American physicians; viz. by Godwin in 1822, Mitchell in 1832, Jackson in 1833, and Wood and Bache in 1834; but the first practitioner to employ it to prevent the pain of an operation was Dr Morton, a Boston dentist, who successfully used it for this purpose in 1846. On the 19th of December of the same year Mr Liston, of University Hospital, London, and Mr Robinson, a dentist, operated upon patients who had been rendered insensible by means of the inhalation of the vapour of ether.
Throughout the year 1847 ether was employed as an anæsthetic both in England and France, but towards the end of that year the anæsthetic properties of chloroform were pointed out by Flourens. The first, however, to introduce this agent into surgical and obstetric practice was Dr I. T. Simpson, of Edinburgh. In 1849 a work on the inhalation of ether was published by Dr Snow, who afterwards introduced a new anæsthetic, viz. amylene, which was capable of producing effects similar to those of chloroform; but as two patients out of but a small number who inhaled the vapour of amylene died, this latter soon fell into discredit, and consequent disuse.
Except in dental practice, in which nitrous oxide gas is the anæsthetic invariably employed, chloroform is almost universally used in surgical operations, one advantage it possesses over ether being its much more rapid action, although this latter property must be regarded as one which constitutes the risk which, although very slight (when the exceedingly small per-centage of deaths resulting from its administration is taken into account), undoubtedly attends its inhalation.