Word: etherization
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...required to abstain from food for four hours before the treatment. . . . When my turn came, I went into a room and lay on what looked like a surgical couch. My clothes were loosened, such things as collar studs and tiepin removed. My temples were then scrubbed with ether soap. Two electrodes were placed on my temples, and were kept in place by a rubber band across my forehead. A gag was put in my mouth...
...anesthetic cone, Lipes used a tea strainer through which the patient breathed ether; for the incision, a broken-handled scalpel from the ship's medicine chest; for antiseptic, alcohol drained from torpedoes; for muscle retractors (to hold the incision open), bent tablespoons. Oversize rubber gloves encumbered Lipes. After cutting through layers of muscle, he took 20 minutes to find the appendix. "I think I've got it," Lipes finally whispered. "It's curled around the blind gut. . . . More flashlights, another battle lantern...
...Ether fumes eddied through the crowded wardroom. The patient grimaced. "More ether," said Lipes. Two hours and a half after the operation started, Lipes took the last catgut stitch. At that moment the ether gave...
...operations, for example, some surgeons prefer a spinal anesthetic. Other surgeons avoid spinals because they entail a somewhat greater risk of complications (e.g., occasional paralyses, persistent headaches and other late effects) than anesthetic gases. Many patients prefer the new rectal anesthetics because they leave none of the aftereffects which ether usually produces. Some doctors contend that nearly all the unpleasant effects of ether (vomiting, nausea, etc.) can be avoided if the anesthetist is properly skilled...
...results may be unhappy. An Army surgeon may, for example, prefer spinal anesthesia. His anesthetist may be skilled in ether and other gases, but not wholly familiar with the often complicated nerve-blockings he is called upon to perform with the spinal and regional anesthesia. Such disagreement increases the patient's risks (deaths from anesthesia are by no means unknown). Meanwhile, the quality of anesthesia suffers, and the professional anesthetist is reduced to a mere technician...