Citation

Fell GE. Buffalo medical and surgical journal 1887; 27(4): 145-157.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1887)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

36668342

PMCID

PMC9474095

Abstract

In one of the latest extensive medical worksf, we find that artificial respiration has a wider range of application than might at first be supposed. It is said to have been used in " drowning, strangulation, occlusion of the air- passages, poisoning by carbonic acid gas, chloroform, opium or its alkaloids, strychnia, woorara, snake-bite, in hemorrhage, or even in nervous shock from a blow or fall." Of the methods, a few may be mentioned, as those oi " Marshall Hall," " Sylvester," " Howard," and others, which depend for their success upon the movements of the limbs or body of the patient, supplemented, usually, by pressure of the thorax on the part of the physician; those in which tubes and mouth-pieces are used, and the air supplied by bellows of different forms, and the methods used on various animals in the physiological laboratories,- in which the trachea is opened to supply the air for respiration.

The first of this series of methods is that generally adopted, and may be found efficacious so long as the muscles of respira tion retain their tonicity, and the heart has not ceased to beat.

The second series, in which mouth-tubes are used, may prove uncertain in action, owing to the difficulty of passing the air into the (paralysed) larynx, with the aesophagus presenting a more direct road for its passage to the stomach.

The third series, differing from the others, presents a positive method. By opening into the trachea, we are enabled to force air into the lungs, and by forcible pressure on the thorax, if needed, expel it.

To the latter method, I suggest the term forced, to dis tinguish it from the ordinary artificial respiration.

Language: en