Search

Much has been said and written on the important subject of anesthesia. Still there has been one particular point that has as yet never been satisfactorily settled, so far as I am able to learn. I refer to the distressing nausea and vomiting that so often follows the administration of ether and chloroform.After having exhausted such methods as lavage, filling the stomach with water prior to the operation, pungent odors to nostrils, hypodermic medication, etc., without any apparent beneficial result, I began experimenting with a measure at once simple in use, logical, harmless and, to my mind, expedient.We know that vomiting may be caused by a drug irritating the vomiting center directly, by being conveyed to it by the circulation or irritating it reflexly from the stomach when conveyed there by the circulation. Also that substances may be ingested which are irritating to the mucous membrane of the

TO THE EDITOR: —Why not a "Booster Club" or "Praise Your Brother Club" in the American Medical Association, with no dues or other requirements except that each member pledge himself never to speak unkindly or in criticism of a brother physician to the laity except that physician be also present. Let us renew our vows and wear buttons to show that we mean to keep them.If such a condition could be brought about we would be held in much greater esteem by our patients and neighbors. Whenever a physician is condemned, maligned or criticized by another physician, the ill-will engendered in the minds of the laity is not against the one physician but the class—individuals are forgotten and the profession is remembered as a whole. If I tell everyone I meet that Doctor Pill is a rank physician; knows nothing of medicine and will stoop to any mean practice,