Richardson

1885 · M4136LV — In:: Scientific American Supplement No. 476 February 14 1885. 1885. 410 x 288 mm. Folio. 7602-7605 pp. Entire issue: 7591-7606 pp. Illus. Self wraps; paper lightly browned small stain on top page. Very good. This article contains the text of a lecture given to the Society of Arts London December 18 1884. It provides a short history of the subject "the lethal process" a table of anesthetic gases and vapors showing their chemical properties and 5 figures illustrating lethal chamber used in the euthanasia of animals. Richardson "spent many years in attempts to relieve pain among men by discovering and adapting substances capable of producing general or local anaesthesis and among animals by more humane methods of slaughter. He brought into use no less that fourteen anaesthetics of which methylene bichloride is the best known and he invented the first double-valved mouthpiece for use in the administration of chloroform. He also produced local insensibility be freezing the part with an ether spray and he gave animals euthanasia by means of a lethal chamber." DNB Vol. XXII Supplement p. 1170. Sir Benjamin Richardson contributed widely to the history of medicine whose important work Disciples of Aesculapius was published in 1900. See: Garrison History of medicine p. 885; Garrison and Morton 6721. In addition this issue of the Scientific American Supplement contains two articles related to anesthesia entitled "The kola-nut" and "Cultivation of the coca plant in the United States" both related the production and use of cocaine as an anesthetic agent. Scientific American Supplement, No. 476, (February 14, 1885). paperback