Читать книгу The Mother and Her Child - Lena K. Sadler - Страница 108

"Twilight sleep" is a recent term which has become associated in the public mind with "painless labor." The reader should understand that "twilight sleep" is not a new method of obstetric anesthesia. While this method of inducing "painless labor" has been brought prominently before the public mind in recent years by much discussion and by numerous magazine articles—being often presented in such a way as sometimes to lead the uninstructed layman to infer that a new method of obstetric anesthesia had just been discovered—it has, nevertheless, been known and more or less used since 1903. Later known as the "Freiburg Method," and as the "Dammerschlaf" of Gauss, and still later popularized as "twilight sleep," this "scopolamin-morphin" method of obstetric anesthesia, has gained wide attention and acquired many zealous advocates.

"Twilight sleep" is, therefore, nothing new—it is simply a revival of the old combination of scopolamin and morphin anesthesia. While many different methods of administering "twilight sleep" have been devised, the following general plan will serve to inform the reader sufficiently regarding the technic of this much-talked-of procedure.

The scopolamin must always be fresh, although different forms of the drug are used. It tends quickly to decompose—forming a toxic by-product—and, according to some authorities, this decomposed scopolamin is responsible for many undesirable results which have attended some cases of "twilight sleep." Various forms of morphin are also used, as also is narcophin.