A Textbook of Pharmacolgy and Therapeutics; Or, the Action of Drugs in Health and Disease

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1901 Excerpt: ... produce anaesthesia, which passes off at once when nitrogen is substituted for nitrous oxide. He has further investigated the blood gases during nitrous oxide anaesthesia, and finds that the oxygen contained in the blood at the deepest stage of anaesthesia is quite sufficient to maintain life and consciousness were no nitrous oxide present. Again Goltstein found that frogs were narcotized in 5J minutes in an atmosphere of nitrous oxide, in 1J hours in hydrogen, and showed that the narcosis and death in mammals from nitrous oxide differed in several details from that under indifferent gases. There can, therefore, be no doubt that nitrous oxide has distinct effects on the central nervous system, although it is indifferent to the other tissues. A further question arises, whether the auaesthesia produced by it in ordinary use is due to this specific action on the nerve cells alone or to the asphyxia. Wood has shown that even a slight admixture of oxygen (',) per cent.) delays anaesthesia considerably, so that if his experiments prove correct, it would appear likely that the lack of oxygen aids the direct effects of the anaesthetic. Bert's and Martin's experiments would indicate that death occurs not from the direct action of the nitrous oxide on the respiratory centre, but from the lack of oxygen, although the depression of the centre is undoubtedly a contributing factor. The same question arises regarding the action on the nerve cells as has been met with in the members of the methane series, and here again the preliminary excitement would seem to indicate not stimulation of the brain areas, but lessened activity of the functions of control and restraint. The respiratory centre is depressed when the gas is inhaled in comparatively dilute form, for Zuntz and Go...