The thermometer used for taking the temperature of the human body is so arranged that the mercury does not descend into the bulb until shaken down, hence after taking the temperature it remains uninfluenced until shaken down. Were an ordinary thermometer used, by the time it was removed from the patient to the light the mercury would descend several degrees.
Pasteur began the studies of fermentation in 1854. Through his observations, aided by the microscope, the opinion was reached that micro-organisms played an important role in the causation of disease. Many of the laboratory investigators became imbued with the spirit, and through their diligent observations the microbes causing many diseases have been isolated. It remained for Koch to discover the tubercle bacillus, or Bacillus tuberculosis, which is the cause of consumption. The sputum of a patient, properly stained, and examined under the microscope, will at once decide whether that individual has consumption.
Having ascertained that bacteria were the cause of disease, sepsis (blood poisoning), etc., it then remained to discover a method of killing them, without any undue injury to the patient. Sir Joseph Lister began experiments upon this hypothesis, and in 1867 was able to publish favorable results. But lo! the world was slow to bend to a new thought ably demonstrated, and for a score of years he was bitterly opposed.
It was Crawford W. Long, in a little village of Alabama, who, in 1842, was the first to put to sleep a patient with ether, and remove a small growth. The patient, upon awakening, had experienced no pain. This method of relieving pain was christened “anæsthesia” several years later, by the distinguished Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose writings did more than those of any other American to eradicate “child-bed fever.” Every woman in the land owes him an eternal debt of gratitude. To Guthrie, of Sackett’s Harbor, New York, is due the credit of first discovering chloroform, but Sir James Simpson, of Edinburgh, deserves the credit of first employing it in medicine.
The surgeons of America laid the foundation of gynecology, the progress of which has been more marked than any department of medicine. The first ovariotomy in the world was performed by Dr. Ephraim McDowell in Kentucky, December, 1809. This was prior to the days of anæsthesia and antisepsis, and a howling mob awaited outside, ready to murder the brave surgeon should his patient die during the operation. “In five days,” says Dr. McDowell, “I visited her, and much to my astonishment found her engaged in making up her bed.” Dr. J. Marion Sims, our illustrious genius who established an international reputation, did much to promulgate plastic work on the female genitalia. The deeds of medical men are soon forgotten by an ungrateful public, and the sons of Æsculapius are the last to have monuments erected to their memory. But four exist in America; one, in New York, to that grand old gynecologist, Dr. J. Marion Sims; one in Washington, to Dr. Samuel D. Gross, “the Nestor of American Surgery;” one in Bushnell Park, Hartford, Conn., to Dr. Horace Wells, the discoverer of anæsthesia; and one in the Public Garden in Boston to the discoverer of anæsthesia. This last bears no name. Antisepsis and anæsthesia have played an unusually important role in obstetrics, by alleviating the sufferings of childbirth and eradicating child-bed fever, thus reducing the mortality of both mother and child.
Physiology has made very rapid strides during this era. Beaumont, in his famous work, describes digestion in the stomach and experiments on the gastric juice. He was enabled to observe this in a voyageur who was accidentally wounded in the stomach by the discharge of a musket, June, 1822. Quite a large opening remained, which Nature closed with a valve. By pushing the valve to one side, the interior of the stomach could be explored.
Through the work of the experimental physiologists in the laboratories, the study of the action of drugs on the lungs, heart, liver, stomach, nerves, etc., has been greatly enhanced.
Anatomy is now being taught by the only true method, and that is dissection. Didactic lectures are given, but the student must dissect every part of the human body before he can receive his degree. Formerly graves were robbed, and the bodies sold to the colleges. Now, however, through legislative enactment, unclaimed bodies are turned over to the colleges, where they are preserved either by injection, a pickling process, or by cold storage.
J. MARION SIMS, A.B., M.D., (Late Surgeon to the Woman’s Hospital, New York.)