Scientific American Supplement, No. 275, April 9, 1881

by Various

An elephant had been operated upon for a diseased eye which gave him great pain, for which he was unprepared, and he was wrathy at the keeper and surgeon. It soon passed off, and the result of the application was so beneficial to the animal that when brought out in a few days after, to have another touch of caustic to the part, he was prepared for them; and, just before the touch, he inflated the lungs to their fullest extent, which occupied more time than the effect of the caustic, when he made no effort at resistance and showed no manifestation of having been pained.

In many cases of extraction of the temporary teeth of children, I make them at the instant I grasp the tooth take one very violent inhalation, which is sufficient. Mesmeric anaesthesia can well be classified under diversion or subjugation of the will, but can be effected in but a small percentage of the cases. To rely upon this first or primary effect, except in instantaneous cases, would be failure.

The second factor is the one upon which I can rely in such of the cases as come into my care, save when I cannot induce them to make such a number of respirations as is absolutely necessary. The whole secret of success lies in the greatest number of respirations that can be effected in from 60 to 90 seconds, and that without any intermission. If the heart, by the alow method of respiration, is pulsating in ratio of four to one respiration, no effect can be induced.

When the respirations are, say, 100 to the minute, and made with all the energy the patient can muster, and are kept up while the operation is going on, there can hardly be a failure in the minor operations.

It is upon this point many of you may question the facts. Before I tried it for the first time upon my own person, I arrived at the same conclusion from a course of argument, that rapid breathing would control the heart's action and pacify it, and even reduce it below the normal standard under my urgent respirations.

In view of the many applications made I feel quite sure in my belief that, inasmuch as the heart's action is but slightly accelerated, though with less force from rapid breathing at the rate of 100 to the minute, there is such an excess of carbonic acid gas set free and crowding upon the heart and capillaries of the brain, without a chance to escape by the lungs, that it is the same to all intents as were carbonic acid breathed through the lungs in common air. Look at the result after this has been kept up for a minute or more? During the next minute the respirations are not more than one or two, and the heart has fallen really below, in some cases, the standard beat, showing most conclusively that once oxygenation has taken place and that the free carbonic acid gas has been so completely consumed, that there is no involuntary call through the pneumogastric nerve for a supply of oxygen.

If any physiological facts can be proven at all, then I feel quite sure of your verdict upon my side.

There is no one thing that goes so far to prove the theory of Lavoisier regarding the action of oxygen in the tissues and capillaries for converting carbon into carbonic acid gas instead of the lungs, as held prior to that time, and still held by many who are not posted in late experiments. At the time I commenced this practice I must confess I knew nothing of it. The study of my cases soon led me to the same theory of Lavoisier, as I could not make the phenomena agree with the old theory of carbonic acid generated only in the lungs.

When Vierordt was performing his experiments upon himself in rapid breathing from six times per minute to ninety-six, I cannot understand why he failed to observe and record what did certainly result--an extreme giddiness with muscular prostration and numbness in the peripheries of the hands and feet, with suffusion of the face, and such a loss of locomotion as to prevent standing erect without desiring support. Besides, the very great difference he found in the amount of carbonic acid retained in the circulation, the very cause of the phenomena just spoken of.

One thing comes in just here to account for the lack of respiration the minute after the violent effort. The residual air, which in a normal state is largely charged with carbonic acid, has been so completely exhausted that some moments are consumed before there is sufficient again to call upon the will for its discharge.