On chloroform and other anæsthetics: their action and administrationSnow, John
History
On chloroform and other anæsthetics: their action and administration
Snow, John
Anesthetics; Chloroform; Snow, John, 1813-1858
In 1855, Dr. Snow gave evidence before the select committee on the
“Public Health and Nuisances Removal Bill,” in which evidence he strove
to convey the impressions which are condensed above. Feeling that he had
not been correctly understood, he afterwards wrote a letter to Sir
Benjamin Hall, in which he set forth the whole of his argument very
distinctly and sensibly. He indicated in this letter that he was no
defender of nuisances, but that whereas a bad smell cannot simply
because it is a bad smell give rise to specific disease, so an offensive
business conducted in a place where it ought not be should be proceeded
against by ordinary law as a nuisance, without using in regard to it the
word pestiferous, or otherwise dragging in and distorting the science of
medicine. As time rolls on, it will probably be elicited that the
groundwork of Dr. Snow’s theory is sound. That if he committed error, it
was in adhering too closely to the abstract fact, and in not allowing
sufficient importance to the favouring influence of impure conditions in
the propagation and distribution of the specific poisons of the specific
diseases.
At all events, the view he had maintained originally, he maintained to
the end, and throughout conscientiously; and the aspersions that the
object of his argument was to support his special theory regarding the
communication of cholera, are utterly unfounded. In the present year,
1858, he read at the Epidemiological Society, and published in the
_Medical Times and Gazette_, a repetition of his previous opinions,
strengthening them by a statistical record, showing that the mortality
of persons working at so-called offensive occupations is at certain ages
lower, and at certain ages slightly higher, than in the general
population. When the paper was read at the Epidemiological Society, Mr.
Edwin Chadwick made a long series of objections to the paper, and
complained that the argument was illogical. It was so, doubtless, on Mr.
Chadwick’s premises; but on the premises advanced by Dr. Snow, as to the
specific propagation of specific diseases by specific poisons,
physiological problems on which, from his experimental researches and
knowledge, he was far the best authority, his arguments were perfectly
logical, and perfectly consistent.
In relation to public health, Dr. Snow contributed many other
observations. In the first number of the _Sanitary Review_, he
communicated a valuable paper, previously read at the Epidemiological
Society, on the “Comparative Mortality of Town and Rural Districts”;
and, previous to his decease, he was busily occupied in investigating
the question of adulteration of bread with alum. He made several
analyses of different specimens of bread, but his papers merely leave a
brief record of the fact, without any comments or results.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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