J . small Anim. Pracf. (1984) 25,3 1-35.

Historical Cases
The

VETERINARIAN.
VOL.

xx, No. 230.

FEBRUARY 1847.

New Series, No. 62.

ON THE EFFECTS OF INHALATION OF THE FUMES OF B T H E R

O N D O G S A N D C A T S , A N D , BY I N F E R E N C E , O N T H E HORSE; WITH THE PROBABLE UTILITY OF SUCH IN VETERINARY MEDICINE

Bv E D W A R DM A Y H E WM.R.C.V.S., London. ,
When the great American discovery was first announced, every veterinarian must have speculated upon the applicability of the process to the lower animals. Doubtless many experiments have been made by various parties, and I have tried the atherial fumes on both dogs and cats. I placed the sulphuric aether in a Florence flask, to the neck of which a large bladder was secured. The head of the animal was then introduced into the bladder, and a spirit lamp applied to the flask. This answered very well; but Mr. Lucas has attained every result with a more simple and less fragile apparatus. A large dog, a cross between the Newfoundland and English mastiff, was obliged to inhale the fumes. Six drachms of sulphuric cther were used. The animal resisted violently. After twelve seconds it began to gasp, and uttered sounds between a cry and a bark. By the thirtieth second the power to struggle was lost in the limbs, though the head was still endeavoured to be withdrawn. The urine was discharged freely in great quantity. In forty-five seconds the dog was quite still, and to every appearance dead. A small sac, containing about half an ounce of inspissated pus was removed from the shoulder, and a suture introduced, before the animal exhibited any signs of life. It then gasped at intervals, and ultimately became conscious. The breathing was much quickened; the pulse could not be felt. As the dog regained its sensibility it had a great desire to escape, and, being held, resisted with all its strength. At the expiration of ten minutes it was more quiet, and in half an hour seemed perfectly restored.
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A small Scotch terrier, having no disease, was subjected to the process for experiment. In fifty seconds it was perfectly narcotized. The breathing ceased; the heart could not be felt to beat. For one minute and seven seconds it remained apparently without life. The mouth was covered with foam, and both the faxes and urine had been voided during the first struggles. The animal first gasped feebly and at long intervals. When the breathing became more regular a sobbing sound was made for a short time, and the animal, after this had ceased, by the eye shewed it was conscious when its master spoke to it. In eight minutes it tried to rise, but could not. Shortly, however, it raised itself upon its side and looked around. In twenty minutes it had recovered, but remained in one corner of the room, evidently not desirous of being disturbed. A spaniel of moderate size, eleven months old, was next experimented upon. The dog resisted much, and cried loudly in a convulsive manner. The foam from the mouth was very copious. At the expiration of a minute and a half the animal was not rendered powerless. Four drachms more of tether were introduced into the flask, but the narcotism was not rendered thereby complete. After another minute had elapsed the dog was released. It lay upon its side, panting irregularly, gasped spasmodically, and soon broke into a jerking yell, which in two minutes subsided, and then the head was beaten against the table with much violence. When the animal got upon its legs, it could not walk straight, but fell after it had moved a few paces, which always took a circular direction. Water and meat were refused with evident disgust. A quarter of an hour passed before the dog by any sign denoted that it could recognize its masters voice; but in ten minutes subsequent to this it was as lively as before the experiment. Three terrier pups were next made to inhale the fumes. They were all of one litter, and six months and three weeks old. As the symptoms displayed in each were similar, so one report will serve for the three. The usual resistance was exhibited; but the cries during the time of breathing the vapour were loud and piercing. The animals seemed to suffer more than any of the older dogs which had been subjected to the process; but the effect was more speedily induced. One was powerless in seventeen seconds; but this was the one most quickly acted upon, the others not being narcotized before twenty-two and twenty-seven seconds had expired. They each continued in a comatose state about four minutes, and then slowly recovered. The return of sensibility was accompanied with every indication of agony: the cries, at first broken and short, at length became long and sharp, the poor little things making violent efforts to get upon their legs, which were constantly employed as the creatures imagined they were running at their fullest speed. The symptoms reminded me of the human being when recovering from an epileptic fit of a severe character. The effects were long subsiding, and it was full two hours before the animals were perfectly restored. During the insensible state, the ears were cropt and the tail cut; but no sign of sensibility of any kind denoted that the animals felt the operations. As in the former cases, the faxes and urine were expelled.

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A cat seven years old and a kitten nine months of age were made to inhale the fumes of sulphuric aether. The older animal was insensible in ten seconds, but continued so only three quarters of a minute, and then recovered gradually without any marked symptom of pain, but seemed, when sensibilty was fully restored, pleasantly lethargic. Wherever it was placed there it continued: meat was accepted when the fifteenth minute had expired. The animal foamed slightly at the mouth, and the urine was discharged. The door was purposely left open, but it was not until an hour and a quarter had elapsed that she leisurely left the room. The kitten was forced to breathe the fumes for three seconds before it was fully acted upon, but the insensible state remained for seven minutes. The breathing was lost-the heart still-the eyelids did not move when the finger was passed over the cornea. The coma was most complete. The first gasp was feeble, and eleven seconds elapsed before another was made. By degrees the inspirations became more full, and by the eight minute from the first gasp respiration of a laborous description might be said to be established. The legs were moved about spasmodically and the nose held against the floor. The animal began to cry, and continued shrieking two minutes and a half it endeavoured to rise, but was unable. The urine escaped, and thick ropy saliva hung from the lips. By degrees the kitten got upon its legs, but could not for some time walk, falling whenever it attempted to move forward. When it acquired a certain ability t o progress, it kept roaming about, only stopping to apply the paws to its nose. Frequent coughing and sneezing now took place; but at the expiration of an hour the little animal curled itself up and appeared to sleep, in which condition it remained during the whole afternoon: when it awoke, however, it accepted meat, but would not move to obtain it. On the following day no effects could be perceived. The results of these trials are not calculated t o inspire any very sanguine hopes. We cannot tell whether the cries emitted are evidence of pain or not; but they are suggestive of agony to the listener, and, without testimony to the contrary, must be regarded as indicative of suffering. The process, therefore, is not calculated to attain the object for which in veterinary practice it would be most generally employed, namely, to relieve the owner from the impression that his animal was subjected to torture. In another light, it is not likely to be of much practical utility. The comatose state is of short duration, and the ordinary operations occupy more time than can by it with safety be secured. There has yet no experiment that I know of been made to ascertain the action of the vapour on the horse; but I cannot anticipate that it will be found of much service t o that animal. Its effects appear to be most energetic in the young, and the consequences seem to be also in these most painful and lasting. If, however, the application, which is so great a boon to the human race, cannot be made to the lower animals, I anticipate it will prove of service in another direction. When a dog has inhaled the fumes, the ether, by the smell, may in the breath of the animal be detected many hours afterwards. This circumstance shows that the agent has been received into the system; and, as an

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energetic and immediate remedy, I am of the opinion it may be beneficially employed for the relief of spasm, impactment, &c.

16, Spring-street, Westbourne-terrace.

News of the great American discovery (as Mayhew called it) of ether anaesthesia crossed the Atlantic in the autumn of 1846. The first public operation in England with the patient narcotized with sulphuric ether was performed at University College Hospital on 21 December of the same year by Robert Liston, who is reported to have said, as soon as the offending leg had been amputated, The Yankee dodge, gentlemen, beats mesmerism hollow. It is, indeed, noteworthy that within a month or so of Listons first experience of the Yankee dodge, a practising veterinary surgeon, barely two years qualified, should have published such a clear account of inhalation anaesthesia in cats and dogs. Unfortunately, Mayhew drew the wrong conclusions from his experiments. In the same issue of The Veterinarian, the editor, William Percivall, took a more hopeful view :

For our part, after perusing Mr. Mayhews interesting cases, we must confess we augur more favourably of the inferences deducible from them than he would seem to do. To us it appears questionable whether the cries emitted by the animals during the experiments are to be regarded as evidence of pain. Looking to the like experiments which have of late been made on men, we find that a good deal has been said and signified by signs by some of the patients under inhalation, which has been mistaken for consciousness, when, in fact, as has been shewn afterwards, by the operations being proceeded with, the subjects of them were all the while insensible to pain. Future experiments will clear up this point, and, no doubt, elicit much of which we are yet ignorant.
Mayhew was not to be swayed and he became, if anything, more sceptical. In the next issue of The Veterinarian, he published a letter containing a full report of his own experience as the subject of an anaesthetic experiment. He had persuaded a surgeon-dentist to attempt to extract a perfectly healthy wisdom tooth under ether narcosis. Two attempts were made on consecutive days. During one session he vomited and nearly leapt through a window; during the second attempt he struggled so violently that he broke the chair. Mayhew gave a full account of all the stages of anaesthesia that he could recall and the observations made by those present during the experiment. He ended his account as follows: The depression it caused me to feel would not have been favourable to the issue of a capital operation; and am I so strange a being, that there is not one living likely to be similarly affected? Animals are certainly depressed after the &her has been administered, and veterinary surgeons know that collapse is in their patients as much to be dreaded as it is in man himself.

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Edward Mayhew was a member of the family that produced Henry Mayhew, author of London Labour and the London Poor and the first editor of Punch. He began his career in the theatre and was the author of at least one successful farce. He was over thirty when he entered the profession. After graduating from the Royal Veterinary College in February 1845, Mayhew was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy. He soon fell out with the Professor of Anatomy, Charles Spooner, and left to set up in practice. From 1846 to 1850 he was a member of Council of the newly formed Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons where he soon made his presence felt. At the third annual general meeting of the Royal College on 3 May 1847 he attacked all and sundry, but especially Professors Dick and Spooner. The latter became so enraged that he declared, inter aka, that Mayhew was a convicted libeller and a desecrator and ridiculer of the Christian faith and that he could prove it. This lead to an action for slander being heard before Lord Chief Baron Pollock in Westminster Hall on 10 February 1848. Mayhew won. Apart from his early work on ether anaesthesia, Mayhew made one other major contribution to small animal medicine and surgery. In The Veterinarian in January 1849 he published the first account of the passage of the urinary catheter in the dog and bitch. He published many other works, mainly on the horse. Mayhew died in 1868. H. E. CARTER