James Young Simpson’s Notice of a New Anaesthetic Agent is a rare pamphlet of which three copies have hitherto been documented. Two of the three known copies were inscribed by Simpson with the words ‘proof copy’. A fourth copy of the pamphlet, also inscribed with the words ‘proof copy’, has been identified. Although regarded by Simpson as a proof copy, there is previously unreported evidence that the pamphlet was advertised by the publisher on 12 November 1847, published on 13 November 1847, and sold on that day by booksellers in Edinburgh. Thus, the Notice pamphlet was the first published report of the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic agent. The pamphlet was issued 2 or 3 days before the well-known revised edition bearing the title Account of a New Anaesthetic Agent, and one week before the publication of Simpson’s papers on chloroform in The Lancet and the Medical Times.
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2.
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FultonJFStantonME.The Centennial of Surgical Anesthesia; an Annotated Catalogue of Books and Pamphlets Bearing on the Early History of Surgical Anesthesia, Exhibited at the Yale Medical Library, October 1946.
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NewsonAJ.A role for a rarely acknowledged pamphlet dated 12 November 1847. In: DruryPME, et al. (eds). The History of Anaesthesia – Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on the History of Anaesthesia.
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WaldieD.Chloroform, the New Agent for Producing Insensibility to Pain by Inhalation.
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The discovery of chloroform. London Med Gazette1847;
40: 1153.
16.
WaldieDWaldieG.The True Story of the Introduction of Chloroform into Anæsthetics: Being the Original Account Given of it in 1847; and a Re-statement in 1870, by David Waldie, …, with Remarks by George Waldie.
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50: 571–572. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)87482-7
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SnowJ.On the Inhalation of the Vapour of Ether in Surgical Operations.
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21.
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1: 149–158.
22.
North British Daily Mail [Lanarkshire, Scotland]. 12 November 1847, p. 2.
23.
The Scotsman [Midlothian, Scotland]. 13 November 1847, p. 3.
24.
The Scotsman [Midlothian, Scotland]. 17 November 1847, p. 1.
25.
North British Daily Mail [Lanarkshire, Scotland]. 20 November 1847, p. 2.
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11: 656–658. doi:10.1136/bmj.s1-11.24.656
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33.
New anaesthetic agent – ether superseded. Caledonian Mercury [Midlothian, Scotland]. 15 November 1847, p. 3.
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2: 549–550.
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