Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847

by Various

A. T., aged thirty-six, a tall strong servant-maid, after inhaling for seventeen minutes, became unconscious, and appeared not to feel a trifling wound with a surgical needle. In a minute consciousness returned. She laughed immoderately, spoke of an agreeable feeling of warmth, and said she had had pleasant dreams. The pulse was slower, the breathing deeper, during the inhalation. The same person upon inhaling, on another occasion, with a better apparatus, became insensible after two minutes. The eyes appeared red and suffused; a carious tooth was then extracted, which caused her to moan slightly. On returning to herself she complained of giddiness, but said she had experienced none but agreeable feelings. She had no idea that the tooth had been extracted.

K. A., aged twenty-nine, upon beginning the inhalation, showed signs of excitement, but in nine minutes lay relaxed like a corpse. A tooth was extracted. Two minutes afterwards she awoke, moaning and disturbed. She stated that she had not felt the extraction of the tooth, but she had heard it.

C. S., aged twenty-two, a strong and healthy young man, a student of surgery, on commencing the inhalation, coughed, and there was a flow of saliva and of tears. In three and a half minutes the skin appeared insensible to pain. Consciousness remained perfect and undisturbed. The skin was warm; the eyes were open; the hearing as usual; the speech, however, was difficult. This state continued eighteen minutes, during which, at his request, two teeth with large fangs were extracted. He held himself perfectly still. He said, afterwards, that he felt the application of the instrument, but was sensible of no pain, during the extraction of the teeth.

W. S., aged nineteen, a strong and healthy young man, a law-student, after inhaling the ether-vapour a minute, began to move his arms about, struck his knees, stamped with his feet, laughed. In three minutes the laughter and excitement had increased. The eyes rolled, he sprang up, talked volubly; the pulse was strong and frequent. In seven minutes he breathed deeply, the eyelids closed, the pulse sank. In eight minutes he began to snore, but heard when called to. In nine minutes the eyes were suffused; the optic axes were directed upwards and outwards. At the end of twelve minutes a tooth was extracted, when he uttered an exclamation and laughed. On his return to himself, he said that he had felt the laceration, or tear, but had experienced no pain. He thought he had been at a carousal.

If I add to these sketches that the patient sometimes becomes pale, sometimes flushed,—that the pupils of the eyes are generally dilated and fixed, sometimes natural and fixed, sometimes contracted,—that violent excitement sometimes manifests itself attended with the persistence or even exaltation of the ordinary sensibility,—that sometimes hysteric fits are brought on; sometimes a state resembling common intoxication,—you will have had the means of forming a sufficiently exact and comprehensive idea of the features of etherisation.

Then, if we exclude the cases in which excitement, instead of collapse, is induced, and, in general, cases complicated with disorder of the head or chest, it appears that the inhalation of ether is not attended with questionable or injurious consequences; and that it places the patient in a condition in which the performance of a surgical operation may be prudently contemplated. If the operation require any length of time,—from thirty to forty minutes, for instance,—the state of insensibility may be safely maintained, by causing the inhalation to be resumed as often as its effects begin to wear off. In minor cases of surgery, in which union of the wound by adhesion is necessary to the success of the operation—in harelip, for instance—an exacter comparison is, perhaps, requisite than has yet been made of the relative results obtained on etherised and non-etherised patients. In graver cases, some of which always end fatally, symptoms, again, may occasionally supervene, or continue from the time of the operation, which are directly attributable to the etherisation. But, in all probability, the entire proportion of recoveries in etherised cases will be found to be increased, through the injurious effects being averted which are produced by fear and suffering. There is every reason to expect that a saving of human life will be thus realised,—an advantage over and above the deliverance from pain and terror.

So the invention of etherisation deserves to be rated as a signal benefit to humanity. Nor is it to be lost sight of, that the invention is quite in its infancy; and that any sound objections which may, at present, be raised against it, are not unlikely to be obviated through the modifications and improvements of which it is no doubt susceptible. The amount of success already obtained, may further be deemed sufficient to make us secure that the object of extinguishing the sufferings of surgery will never again be lost sight of by the medical profession and the public. One item, partial indeed, but a tolerably severe one, in the catalogue of the physical ills to which flesh is heir, is thus so far in a fair way of being got rid of.

The method of Mesmer was an attempt to cure bodily disease by making a forcible impression on the nerves. And no doubt can be entertained that many of his patients were the better for the violent succussion of the system which his developed practice put them through.

But mesmerism contained two things,—a bold empirical practice and a mystical theory. Mesmer strove, by the latter, to explain the effects which his practice produced. An odd fate his method and his theory will have had. His method was considered, by many of his contemporaries, as of solid importance; his theory was for the most part ridiculed as that of a half-crazed enthusiast and impostor. Now, no reasonable person can regard his practice in any other light than as a rough and hazardous experiment. But his theory, in the mean time, is ceasing to be absurd; for it admits of being represented as a very respectable anticipation of Von Reichenbach's recent discoveries.

Mesmer, a native of Switzerland, was born in 1734. He became a student at Vienna, where his turn for the mystical led him to the studies of alchemy and astrology. In the year 1766, he published a treatise on the influence of the planets upon the human frame. It contains the idea that a force extends throughout space through which the stars can affect the body. In attempting to identify this force, Mesmer first supposed it to be electricity. Afterwards, about the year 1773, he adopted the belief that it must be ordinary magnetism. So at Vienna, from 1773 to 1775, he employed the practice of stroking diseased parts of the body with magnets. But, in 1776, making a tour in Bavaria and Switzerland, he fell in with the notorious Father Gassner, who had at that time undertaken the cure of the blind prince-bishop of Ratisbon by exorcism. Then Mesmer observed that, without employing magnets, Gassner obtained very much the same kind of effects upon the human body which he had produced with their aid. The fact was not lost upon him. He threw away his magnets, and henceforth operated with the hand alone. In 1777, his reputation a little damaged by a failure in the case of the musician Paradies, Mesmer left Vienna, and the following year betook himself to Paris. The great success which he obtained there drew upon him the indignation and jealousy of the faculty, who did not scruple to brand him with the stigma of charlatanism. They averred that he threw difficulties in the way of a satisfactory examination of his method; but perhaps he had reason to suspect want of fairness in the proposed inquiry. He refused, from the government, an offer of twenty thousand francs to divulge his method; but he was ready to explain it, it is true, under a pledge of secresy, to individuals for one hundred louis. But his practice itself gave most support to the allegations against him. His patients were received and treated with an air of mystery and studied effect. The apartment, hung on every side with mirrors, was dimly lighted. A profound silence was observed, broken only by strains of music, which occasionally floated through the rooms. The patients were arranged around a large vessel, which contained a heterogeneous mixture of chemical ingredients. With this and with each other, they were placed in relation, by holding cords or jointed rods; and among them moved slowly and mysteriously Mesmer himself, affecting one by a touch, another by a look, a third by continued stroking with the hand, a fourth by pointing at him with a rod.