noun
definition
A substance administered to reduce the perception of pain or to induce numbness for surgery and may render the recipient unconscious.
adjective
definition
Causing anesthesia; reducing pain sensitivity.
definition
Insensate: unable to feel, or unconscious.
Examples of anaesthetic in a Sentence
For the action and use of chloroform as an anaesthetic, see Anaesthesia.
It is also an antiseptic and, in small quantities, a feeble anaesthetic. It is absorbed by the unbroken skin.
The therapeutic applications of the drug are based entirely upon its anaesthetic or anodyne power.
Brucine is a local anaesthetic. Strychnine enters the blood as such, being freely absorbed from mucous surfaces or when given hypodermically.
It is used as an anaesthetic, principally in dentistry, producing when inhaled a condition of hysterical excitement often accompanied by loud laughter, whence it is sometimes called "laughing gas."
Its use as a local anaesthetic (see Anaesthesia) makes it the most valuable of the coca alkaloids, and it is much used in ophthalmic practice.
For pharmaceutical purposes crude petroleum is no longer generally used by civilized races, though the product vaseline is largely employed in this way, and emulsions of petroleum have been administered internally in various pectoral complaints; while the volatile product termed rhigolene has been largely used as a local anaesthetic.
Externally chloroforrr ‘ is an antiseptic, a local anaesthetic if allowed to evaporate, and a rubefacient, causing the vessels of the skin to dilate, if rubbed in.
It acts similarly, though less markedly, upon the nerves which determine the secretion of the perspiration, and is therefore a local anaesthetic or anodyne and an anhidrotic. Being rapidly absorbed into the blood, it exercises a long and highly important series of actions on nearly every part and function of the nervous system.
Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) was at one time believed to act simply by cutting off the supply of oxygen to the tissues, but it also has a specific effect in producing paralysis of certain parts of the central nervous system, and hence its value as an anaesthetic; when given in small amounts mixed with air it produces a condition of exhilaration.
Professor Schafer recommended the use of atropine prior to the administration of a general anaesthetic, in cases where the action of the vagus nerve upon the heart is to be dreaded; and there is little doubt of the value of this precaution, which has no attendant disadvantages, in all such cases.