311 - Surgical anaesthesia using sulphuric ether. Experiments in Vicenza, town of the Lombardo-Veneto kingdom
Autor(s): G. Dall'Olio
Issue: RIMeL - IJLaM, Vol. 5, N. 4, 2009 (MAF Servizi srl ed.)
Page(s): 311 -7
On October 16, 1846 at the Massachussets General Hospital there was the first successfull demonstration of a pain-free surgical operation; the dentist William Morton made the patient inhal ether for a few minutes to achieve the complete narcosis. The operation was performed by the surgeon John Collins Warren. The news about surgical anaesthesia spread across the Atlantic ocean and rapidly became popular in Europe. Inhaled ether as vapour was used in Great Britain on December 1846 and straight after in other states of Europe. Also in italian hospitals, surgeons used ether anaesthesia in order to mitigate the pain during surgical operations. With surprisingly fast propagation this new way of eliminating pain reached also Vicenza, a provincial town in the Lombardo-Veneto kingdom, within few months after Morton discovery. Here many experiments either on the effect of ether inhalation, or the suitable dose of ether to reach narcosis avoiding side effects, or the electricity effects in post-narcosis time and surgical operation in patients completely insensible were carried out. The observations and results were published on the scientific journal “Annali Universali diMedicina”. The author of these experiments and of the published papers was the young surgeon of Vicenza Luigi Chiminelli. He took his medical degree in 1840 at Padova University and practised surgery for twenty years in Vicenza and sourrondings. Later he worked in the field of medical hydrology.
Key-words: William Morton, ether, sulphuric ether, surgical anaesthesia.