The Project Gutenberg EBook of Parturition without Pain or Loss of
Consciousness, by James Townley

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Title: Parturition without Pain or Loss of Consciousness

Author: James Townley

Release Date: October 4, 2010 [EBook #34029]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PARTURITION WITHOUT PAIN

OR

Loss of Consciousness.

BY

JAMES TOWNLEY,

Member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Fellow of the
Royal College of Surgeons of England, Fellow and Councillor of the
Medical Society of London, F.L.S., Etc. Etc.

_SECOND EDITION._

LONDON:
JOHN W. DAVIES, 54, PRINCES STREET,
LEICESTER SQUARE.

EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN AND STEWART.
DUBLIN: FANNIN AND CO.

MDCCCLXII.

LONDON:
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.

PREFACE

TO

THE SECOND EDITION.

A second edition of my little work being required at the expiration of
only a few months is gratifying to me, as evidence that my views
regarding the use of an Anodyne in Parturition have attracted
considerable attention. I may take this opportunity of stating, that I
have never had any intention of undervaluing the merits of others who
have laboured in the field of anaesthetics, my only claim to attention
consisting in the novelty of my mode of applying the agent, by which its
effects are so remarkably modified.

When chloroform is administered in the usual way it is given slowly, and
"goes the round of the circulation" before it relieves the pain or
produces anaesthesia. Whereas, in my plan of using the "anodyne," the
rapidly repeated but interrupted impressions made on the nervous system
produce the anodyne without the anaesthetic effect--before, indeed, the
mass of the blood has become affected. In this consists all the
originality to which I lay claim. I have used the word "anodyne,"
instead of "modified chloroform," in consequence of this peculiarity of
its effects. I cannot