How did James Simpson help make surgery safer?

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How did James Simpson help make surgery safer?
Aaargghh! That hurts!
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Problems with Surgery

• Three main problems
• Pain
• Infection
• Bleeding
• We will investigate how these problems were dealt
  with to make surgery safer and more effective

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How can the problem of pain be solved?

• We need an effective and safe
• ANAESTHETIC

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Early Nineteenth Century

• Barber-surgeons
• Use of drink, drugs, hypnosis
• 1799 - Humphrey Davy experiments with nitrous
  oxide (laughing gas)
• 1845 - Horace Long uses nitrous oxide, not
  effective for everyone
• 1846 - John Warren - successfully uses ether

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James Simpson(1811-1870)
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Read the sheet and answer the questions about
Simpson

• How did Simpson feel about ether?
• How did Simpson discover chloroform?
• Why was there opposition to the use of
  anaesthetics like chloroform?
• How did chloroform become accepted?

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James Simpson(1811-1870)

• Professor of Medicine and Midwifery at the
  University of Edinburgh during the 1840s
• Disliked ether - inflammable, pungent smell,
  irritated the lungs
• Promoted use of chloroform in surgeries

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Opposition to Chloroform

• Surgeons inexperienced, accidents and overdoses
• Calvinist Church opposition to chloroform in
  childbirth
• Open to abuse by surgeons
• Considered a soft option by the army

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Queen Victoria

• Given chloroform during birth of eighth child,
  Leopold (1853) by John Snow
• Became more socially acceptable
• Most popular anaesthetic until 1900, found to
  damage the liver

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Next lesson

• We will investigate the problem of
• INFECTION