The question considered : is it justifiable to administer chloroform in surgical operations, after its having already proved suddenly fatal in upwards of fifty cases, when pain can be safely prevented, without loss of consciousness, by momentary benumbing cold? / by James Arnott, M.D.

  • Arnott, James, 1794-1885.
Date:
1854
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The question considered : is it justifiable to administer chloroform in surgical operations, after its having already proved suddenly fatal in upwards of fifty cases, when pain can be safely prevented, without loss of consciousness, by momentary benumbing cold? / by James Arnott, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    \ death proceeds from a poisonous agency, or from being choked by the difficulty of exhibiting a drug ? Although asphyxia may not be so quickly produced as certain writers seem to imagine, common sense points out the necessity of largely diluting the narcotic vapour with atmospheric air. And it is not improbable, that so far from being injurious, the impurities just alluded to, may answer another purpose of such dilution, in preventing the administration of too large a quantity of the drug. The chlo- roform may be too pure; and the evil effects which have been attributed to the substances mixed with it, may be so with as little justice, as the evil effects of drunkenness are sometimes im- puted by the tippler, not to the large quantity of spirits which he takes, but to the vile water with which it is adulterated. Not a little mystery has been thrown on the origin of the various kinds of etherization, which, it may be useful to dispel. Mr. Neale, in his lately published Travels in the East, describes a curious operation which he saw performed on a horse, by a Turkish veterinary surgeon. After the animal was thrown down, he was made to breathe the fumes of a mixture of burning narcotics until insensibility was produced, when the operation was proceeded with.* What was this in principle but etherization, and what consequently is modern etherization but an extension of veterinary to human surgery ? In the Journal de Toulouse, 1847, Dr. Dauriol recommends the production of insensibility by the inhalation of the fumes of henbane, bella- donna, and other narcotics of this class, in preference to the > substances at present employed; and in support of this recom- f mendation, he relates five cases in which the method was ( employed by himself with success. The inhalation of sulphuric ether, as a means of producing insensibility, originated in the United States. Three persons have contested the invention, Messrs. Wells, Morton, and • See Appendix A.