Volume 9b - History of Anaesthesia Society

Dr M Kus (LYacori)
An un-.rlanted side-effect of early ether and chloroform anaesthesia rms
sudden ciii~datory arrest. These unham deaths caused concern ammg
physicians and patients and were the impetus for &king an interest in
the possibility of circul2tory resuscitation in the second half of the
nineteenth century.
Early animal shdies
Schiff, physiolqist at the University of Florence, was the first to
perform Yracotany and direct cardiac mssage in experimental animals
in 1974. He found that it was pssible for the heart to resume
spontaneous action even aeter eleven and a half minutes of circulatory
arrest. At the same time, Boe:hm with co-workers at the Institute of
Pharmacology of the University of Dorpat, Tartu, showed the
effectiveness of closed chest cardiac canpression in cats.2
Jan Prus
In 1399, Jan Prus, Professor of Pathology at the University of Lvov
performed his own expriments with cardiac resuscitation. Jan Prus was
born in Wadowice near Cram in 1853. In the years between 1877 and
1882 he studied mdicine at the Jaqiellonian University in Cracow. FYun
1882 to 1587 he was an assistant in the Departments of Pathological
Anatomy and Physiology. In 1887, after winning a scholarship, he rmnt
to Berlin University and then sub~quently to Paris University where he
attended h-oEessor Charcot's clinic. In 1896 he bctcame Head of the
Department of Pathology, Faculty of Fledicine, University of Lvov. In
1900 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
Prus's animal -ts
m carried out his experiments on dogs. Tne results of these
experiments were recorded on a Marey's cylinder and on a Herig
kyrmqraph. After tracheotomy, artificial ventilation was performed by a
bellows apparatus driven by an electric mtor.
In the first experimental group of forty-four doys circulatory arrest
was caused by clamx~ing the tracheotomy tube. After a variable arrest
rime, which varied between one and sixty minutes, Prus opened the thorax
and gerfanned internal cardiac massage. In thirty-one cases (70%)
s~nhneous heart beat was restored. Prus noticed that the longer the
duration of the cardiac arrest, the longer cardiac mssage was
necessary. In nineteen cases he failed to resuscitate the animals.
mlve dcqs rere fully resuscitated and one of them was presented during
a scientific meeting a year later ! In the sacond experimental grow of
twenty-one dogs the heart was stopped by an overdose of chloroform. It
was possible to restore the heart action ia seventeen doys (76%). One
dog survived for eight months.