“As soon as the powers of nitrous oxide were discovered, Dr. Beddoes at once concluded that it must necessarily be a specific for paralysis; a patient was selected for the trial, and the management of it was intrusted to Sir Humphry Davy. Previous to the administration of the gas, he inserted a small pocket thermometer under the tongue of the patient, as he was accustomed to do upon such occasions, to ascertain the degree of animal temperature, with a view to future comparison. The paralytic man, wholly ignorant of the nature of the process to which he was to submit, but deeply impressed, from the representation of Dr. Beddoes, with the certainty of its success, no sooner felt the thermometer under his tongue than he concluded the talisman was in full operation, and in a burst of enthusiasm declared that he already experienced the effect of its benign influence throughout his whole body. The opportunity was too tempting to be lost; Davy cast an intelligent glance at Coleridge, and desired his patient to renew his visit on the following day, when the same ceremony was performed, and repeated every succeeding day for a fortnight, the patient gradually improving during that period, when he was dismissed as cured, no other application having been used.”
Medical Literature.
The greatest historians of medicine are the Germans. Especially valuable are the works of—
Kurt P. J. Sprengel (1766-1833), of Pomerania, professor of medicine at Halle. He was a great botanist, but his immortal work on the History of Medicine eclipsed all his other labours for medical science.
Heinrich Haeser (1811-1885), the author of the learned Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin und der Epidemischen Krankheiten, which is one of the most popular works of this class.
Dr. Joh. Hermann Baas, who is the author of the valuable and encyclopædic Grundriss der Geschichte der Medicin, excellently translated into English by Dr. H. E. Handerson, of Cleveland, Ohio (1889).
Dr. Theo. Puschmann’s History of Medical Education has recently been translated into English by Mr. E. H. Hare (1891).
Amongst those of our own countrymen who have rendered great services to medical literature are—
Sir Charles Hastings (1794-1866), the founder of the British Medical Association.
Sir Charles Scudamore (1779-1849), one of the greatest authorities on gout, who popularised Hydro-therapeutics by his writings.