Dr Nooth and his apparatus. The role of carbon dioxide in medicine in the late eighteenth century.
The two earliest inhalers devised for the administration of ether anaesthesia in the U.K. (Hooper's and Squire's apparatus) both incorporated the bottom part of a Nooth's apparatus. This, which was once a household object, is now remembered only as a footnote in one or two specialist histories, and Nooth himself, who was a most distinguished and respected medical man in his day, is almost completely forgotten. Yet there are many aspects of Nooth's life that are of great interest, and his apparatus was one of the very first to be designed to produce, for medicinal purposes, what may inclusively be called carbonated waters; and, surprisingly, there are strong links of coincidence between the histories of artificial mineral waters and of anesthesia, and the personalia involved in each.
D000769:Anesthesia, Inhalation / Q000266:history* / Q000295:instrumentation; D002245:Carbon Dioxide; D002253:Carbonated Beverages / Q000266:history; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006113:United Kingdom
D002245:Carbon Dioxide