Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1837

EDWARD LAW HUSSEY (1816-1899) Miscellanea medico-chirurgica. E. Pickard Hall and J. H. Stacy, printers to the University 1882 vii [1] 418 [1] pp. 22.3 cm.

These letters, case reports, editorials, and commentaries provide a unique insight into medicine and surgery as practiced in London during the nineteenth century. Hussey, who studied medicine at London's St. Bartholomew's Hospital, was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and surgeon to the Radcliffe Infirmary. An abrasive individual, he was critical of his contemporaries and generally unreceptive to new ideas and methods. However, as coroner of London, he was successful in having a new public mortuary built and made some noteworthy changes in the inquest system. In quoting from an essay on anesthesia by Lister (see No. 1930), Hussey noted that "The first really valuable suggestion . . . was made in the year 1800 by Sir Humphrey Davy, who having himself experienced relief from pain when breathing nitrous oxide gas, threw out the hint that it might probably be employed with advantage to produce a similar effect in Surgical practise" (p. 96). This was almost half a century before Wells (see No. 1817) demonstrated the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide. The University of Iowa Libraries' copy is lacking Volume II of the set.

See Related Record(s): 1930 1817

Gift of John Martin, M.D.