ON THE TREATMENT OF CANCER, BY THE REGULATED APPLICATION OF AN ANESTHETIC TEMPERATURE

As the subject will probably be entirely new to many readers of these pages, it may be proper to give a brief account of the agent whose effects in cancer it is their purpose to describe. The very low or anesthetic temperature that is used remedially as a local application to inflamed or painful parts, is produced, by what are termed frigorific mixtures, or combinations of pounded ice and various salts, which, in dissolving, reduce the temperature below zero of Fahrenheit's thermometer, or more than thirty degrees lower than any temperature hitherto employed in medicine. The application of such a mixture to the skin, or mucous membrane, causes little sensation of any kind, as the part soon becomes benumbed, and the slight tingling or smarting produced (which is seldom so great as to be complained of by the patient), is more allied to the sensation of heat than of cold. If the frigorific differs from cold water or ice in the sensations it produces, it differs from them still more in its physiological and remedial effects. There is, in fact, no greater resemblance between the effects of different low degrees than there is between different high degrees of temperature;— as, for example, between the soothing heat of fomentations, and the scalding heat that is occasionally resorted to as a powerful stimulant, or the still higher degree which, when communicated by an iron, is often used as an escharotic.

In investigating the pretensions of a new remedy, we require evidence, not only of its power of palliation or cure, but of its general safety. Large and repeated doses of opium or morphia, or copious bleedings, unquestionably alleviate the pain from cancer, but it is well known, from their effects in this, as well as in other diseases, that they as certainly prove injurious to the patient's constitution, or shorten his life. Now, there is no deficiency of evidence respecting the safety of the remedy which I have to propose as their substitute.