Page 274 - My FlipBook

272 — DENTAL MEDICINE. ;

the latter, have a numbness at their extremities, which increases
until, in many cases, there is partial paralysis as far as the elbow,
while the limbs become fixed. The hands are so thoroughly af-
fected, that when open the patient is powerless to close them,
and vice versa. There is a vacant gaze from the eyes, and a
looking into space without blinking of the eyelids for a minute
or more. The head seems incapable of being held erect, and
there is no movement of the arms or legs, as is usual when in
great pain. There is no disposition on the part of the patient
to take hold of the operator's hand or interfere with the
operation." Dr. Bonwell based his method on the following
theory :
, I. Diversion of the will-force in the act of forced respira-
tion at a moment when the heart and lungs have been in normal
reciprocal action (twenty respirations to eighty pulsations)
which act could not be made and carried up to one hundred
respirations per minute without such concentrated effort that
ordinary pain could make no impression upon the brain while
this abstraction was kept up.
2. There is a specific effect resulting from enforced respira-
tion of one hundred to the minute, due to the excess of carbonic
acid gas set free from the tissues.^ generated by this enforced normal
act of throwing into the lungs five times the normal amount of
oxygen demanded in one minute, when the heart has not been
aroused to exalted action, which comes from violent action in
running, or where one is suddenly startled ; which excess of car-
bonic acid cannot escape in the same ratio from the lungs, since
the heart does not respond to the proportionate overaction of the
lungs.
" Hyperxmia is the last in the chain of effects ; which
3. is
due to the excessive amount of air passing into the lungs, pre-
venting but little more than the normal quantity of blood from
passing from the heart into the arterial circulation, but damming
it up in the brain, as well as throughout the capillary and venous
systems as well as upon the heart, the same as if it were sus-
pended in that gas outside the body."
Dr. A. Hewson agrees with Dr. Bonwell as to the efficacy of