Shropshire Routes to Roots

Pioneer : Hickman's letter

Shrewsbury Chronicle 3.6.1825 [Reproduced with kind permission of: Shropshire Newspapers]

On Employing SUSPENDED ANIMATION during SURGICAL OPERATIONS.

Dr Hickman of Shifnal,
has published a letter showing that Suspended Animation may be safely employed during Operations of Animals, with a view of ascertaining its probably utility in Surgical Operations on the Human Subject. We extract the following in the hope of furthering the writer's desire for liberal experimental inquiry:

To T.A.Knight Esq of Downton Castle.
Sir,
The facility of suspending animation, but carbonic acid gas, and other means, without permanent injury to the subject, having been long known, it appears to me rather singular that no experiments have hitherto been made with the object of ascertaining whether operations could be successfully performed upon animals whilst in a torpid state: and whether wounds inflicted upon them in such a state would be found to heal with greater or less facility than similar wounds inflicted on the same animals whilst in possession of all of their powers of feeling and suffering. Several circumstances led me to suspect that wounds made on animals whilst in a torpid state, would be found, in many cases, to heal most readily: and the results of some experiments which I have made, lead me to think that these conjectures are well founded, and to hope that you will think the results sufficiently interesting to induce you to do me the honour to lay them before the Royal Society. The experiments were necessarily made upon living animals, but they were confined to animals previously condemned to death; and as their lives were preserved, and their suffering very slight (certainly not so great as they would have sustained if their lives had been taken away by any of the ordinary methods of killing such animals). I venture to hope that they, in the aggregate, rather received benefit than injury. Subjects of different species were employed, chiefly Puppies of a few weeks or months old, and the experiments were often repeated, but as the results were all uniform, and as my chief object is to attract the attention of other medical men to the subject, I wish to do little more than state the general results.

Experiment 1st. Dogs of about a month old were placed under a glass cover, surrounded by water, so as to prevent the ingress of atmospheric air, where their respiration in a short time ceased, and a part of one ear of each was taken off; there was no hemorrhage, and the wounds were healed at the end of the third day, without any inflammation having taken place, or the animals having apparently suffered any pain of inconvenience from the operation.

[Shrewsbury Chronicle 3.6.1825]