Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1882 — Rapid Breathing as an Anaesthetic. [ARTICLE]

Rapid Breathing as an Anaesthetic.

[Richmond (Va„) Religious Herald.| Dr. M. T. Yates, iu a letter published in tbe Biblical Recorder, says of the surgical operations to which he has recently submitted: "My doctors said they had seen it stated by an American doctor that if a person would breathe as rapidly as possitde under au operation he would not feel the pain of cutting, and they wished, to try it on me, to which proposition 1 assented. Dr. Macleod superintended the breathing—which was like that of a dog ou a hot summer day—bolding, out of my sight, a hankerchiel, to be dropped as a signal—when he saw the color come in 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 amesthetic? Is it simply a diversion of the mind?” We presume the rapid breathing acts very much like the inhalation of laughing gas; that it oxydizes the blood most likely, and makes the heart beat faster as shown by the color of the face, and this exhilaration prod uses iusensibility to physical pain. A man slightly wounded in battle often does not know it at tbe time—partly, perhaps, because of mental preoccupation, but mainly, we suppose, because he is toned up by the excitement of tbe conflict. But, whatever may be tbe explanation, Dr. Yates’ experience is an instuctive instince of the connection aud interaction of bodily estate and mental sensibility.