Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1882 — Rapid Breathing as an Anesthetic. [ARTICLE]

Rapid Breathing as an Anesthetic.

Dr. M. T. Yates, in a letter published in the Biblical Record, says of the surgical operations to which he has recently submitted : “My doctors said that they had seen it stated by an American doctor that if a person would breathe as rapidly as possible under an operation he would not feel the pain of cutting, and they wished to try it on me, to which proposal I assented. Dr. Macleod superintended the breathing—which was like a dog on a hot summer day—holding, out of my sight, a handkerchief in his hand to be dropped as a signal—when he saw the color come to my face—for Henderson, the operating doctor to go ahead. When Macleod told me ‘ That will do, ’ I was surprised to find that the operation had been performed. This I have tried three times, and have not, at either time, felt more pain than is usually inflicted in the case of vaccination. I heard the knife rip through the flesh, like the sound produced in cutting leather, but I did not feel the pain. What is the philosophy of this kind of an anaesthetic? Is it

simply a division of the mind? We presume the rapid breathing act*! very mnch like the inhalation of laughing-gas ; that it oxidizes the blood more highly and makes the heart beat faster, as shown by the color in the face, and this exhilaration produces insensibility to physical pain. A man slightly wounded in battle often does not know it at the time—partly, perhaps, because of mental preoccupation, but mainly, we suppose, because he is timed up by the excitements Of the conflict. But, whatever may be the explanation, Dr. Yates’ experience is an instructive instance of the connection and interaction of bodily estate and mental sensibility. Richmond (Fa.) Religious Herald.