thesis
Physostigmine and nitrous oxide in anaesthesia
- Publication date
- 4 October 1985
- Publisher
- The present thesis is chiefly concerned with disturbances during
recovery from anaesthesia. This area has been poorly studied. Medicine
has tended to leave the patient's well-being during the
period of wrecoveryM to the powers of nature.
At one time~ anaesthetists considered anaesthesia as a good surrogate
for sleep. It has proved to be notoriously difficult to
eradicate this simplicism because it offers a readily understandable,
if misleading, explanation of the action of anaesthetic agents.
Such thinking is even perpetuated in the standard pharmacological
vocabulary. For example, it is known that no drug or
technique
we still
promise
has been found to induce a state of natural sleep~ yet
talk about "hypnotics". Ought an anaesthetist~ then to
his patient that anaesthesia will be "just like a pleasant
sleep"? It is doubtful to what extent contemporary anaesthesia,
That
erroneously likened to invigorating sleep, is really safe.
most illustrious anaesthesiological professional society,
the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland~
displays a noble coat of arms with the motto "In somno securitas".
There are occasions when one is inclined to put a question
mark after this statement. Fortunately, it is understood nowadays
that a good anaesthetic should be less of a pharmacological
manipulation
tenance of
which depresses vital functions and more of a mainnonnill
physiological functions in terms of optimal
body homeostasis. In other words, an anaesthetic based on preserving,
restoring
will probably more
classical "borrow'd
and supporting the functioning of the body
closely resemble a pleasant sleep than the
likeness of shrunk death" (Shakespeare~
Romeo & Juliet, Act IV, Scene 2~ line 104).