Journal of Anesthesia History最新文献

Irwin B. Wilson and anesthesiologist Richard J. Kitz found the enzyme acetylcholinesterase to be inactivated in two steps by covalently acting molecules resembling acetylcholine in structure. Such molecules rapidly and reversibly bind to the active site of the enzyme. Next, the reversible complex undergoes covalent fixation at a characteristic rate. The Kitz-Wilson phenomenon applies to many cases of time-dependent enzyme inhibition. Experimental data are commonly graphed in linear fashion on “Kitz-Wilson plots”. Kitz also contributed to a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry assay for acetylcholine that was suitable for the nonbiological detection of that neurotransmitter in mammalian brain.

An ex-employee of a Newark straw hat factory, 15-year-old Robert Alden Fales battered the factory's cashier Thomas Haydon on the head multiple times with a wooden staff. Fales then applied a chloroform-soaked handkerchief to Haydon's nose until the cashier stopped moving. Arrested and convicted of murder, Fales had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. At 23 years of age, the criminal chloroformist died in jail from tuberculosis.

Buenos Aires’ González Varela Library-Museum exhibits a possibly unique Lundy Rochester Model of Heidbrink Kinet-O-Meter anesthesia machine. Surveyed anesthesia libraries or museums reported no identical model of anesthesia machine or literature specific to same. Machine markings and the flowmeter patent helped narrow the year of manufacture to circa 1936.

Urial K. Mayo (1816–1900) was a successful Boston dentist who was plagued by personal scandal. In 1883 he patented extending the duration of nitrous-oxide anesthesia with an alcoholic tincture of hops and poppies.

This paper is the first in a series of publications. These investigate, whether important elements of the historiography of anesthesia require a critical reappraisal. A systematic, combined presentation, contextualization and assessment of recent European research is provided. This includes the author's own findings. These emanate from two extensive projects. They combine very recent findings with results of earlier research, conducted by the author and numerous collaborators over the last 18 years. The findings represent an ever increasing and ever more robust body of evidence. They add an important new element to our international historiography. As an introduction, several definitions will be given for criteria, which designate “modern” anesthesia and its technology. On one of these criteria, the history of professionalization and specialization, a short overview will be given. This will be followed by an overview of general contexts, key features and early achievements of anesthesia-related technology. All results will be compared with a currently dominating narrative: This alleges “dominance” of US-American and British pioneers and developments. Apparent biases and inconsistencies are identified. These suggest that our current, international historiography of anesthesia may require a critical reassessment. Three subsequent articles will focus on specific aspects of anesthesia technique and technology. Their results likewise suggest a history of internationalism and trans-disciplinary reciprocity, rather than of national dominances. Further investigations will aim to ascertain the nature and extent of potential interactions, which may nowadays be underrecognized.

An Ohio dentist, Corydon Munson, patented a gasometer with an attachment for vaporizing trace amounts of volatile general anesthetics or their mixtures into unoxygenated nitrous oxide. After vaporizing a variant of George Harley's ACE mixture into nitrous oxide, Munson branded his own novel anesthetic combination as ACENO.

J.Y. Simpson of Edinburgh, Scotland discovered chloroform anesthesia in November 1847. During this time, W.T.G. Morton's agents had been collecting royalties for the use of ether across much of the United States. After reading about the advantages of chloroform as cited in C.T. Jackson's writings in the Boston Daily Atlas, S.F. Gladwin, a dentist in Lowell, Massachusetts, who had been reluctant to pay any ether royalties, demonstrated his independence and opportunism in swiftly adopting chloroform in his practice and publicizing its use through local advertisements.

Born in New Hampshire but raised in Massachusetts, 14-year-old William J.A. DeLancey became “the man of the house” after the accidental death of his father. Amiable and good humored, young DeLancey supported his widowed mother and his three sisters until the girls all reached maturity. After he married, DeLancey moved to Illinois and took up dentistry, eventually settling in Centralia. Following anesthesia training back east at Manhattan's Colton Dental Association, DeLancey returned to Centralia. There he practiced the Coltonian method of testing freshly made nitrous oxide upon himself before using the gas upon patients. Before his training at Colton Dental, DeLancey had advertised in Centralia newspapers only in prose. After he began administering laughing gas to his patients and to himself, DeLancey waxed poetic and began advertising in heroic couplets in local newspapers.

The Chicago Post-Graduate School of Anaesthesia (PGSA) commenced with the opening of the Columbian Exposition, eight miles north of that Chicago World's Fair in May of 1893. When PGSA founder Samuel J. Hayes, D.D.S., M.S.A., forsook Chicago to tend to his moribund son back in Pittsburgh, Hayes’ fellow professor, James M. Clyde, D.D.S., M.S.A., kept the PGSA from closing.