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.

  • Arnott, James (James Moncrieff), 1794-1885.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

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. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/32 (page 24)
    having deceived him by promising exemption from pain, had no recollection of his suffering on the intoxication passing off, at its close. Because a condition is not remembered, it by no means follows that it did not exist. It were welcome news to a debtor, that he could cancel his obligations by forgetting them. It is a question whether there would not, on the whole, be less pain felt, even in deep-seated operations, from completely be¬ numbing the surface by cold than by chloroform not pushed to a very dangerous extent. In benumbing the part, besides, there is no loss of consciousness—a loss that would, by some, be as much dreaded as a moderate degree of pain ; notwithstanding Dr. Simpson’s ridicule of their fears, and his reminding them that, every night, they became unconscious in their beds. They would have some difficulty in comprehending that the death¬ like, and dangerous unconsciousness, which has been caused by chloroform, is identical with that induced by sleep. In the condition, moreover, approaching and following the apoplectic stupor produced by chloroform (the occasional origin of mania, and many other evils), there is risk of a delirious expression of thought, which, as respects women particularly, would alone, were they aware of the circumstance, deter them from its unnecessary use.* After the foregoing remarks, we are prepared to furnish an answer to the question forming the title to this paper,—Whether it is justifiable to employ chloroform in surgical operations, after so many deaths have been caused by it, especially when we might use a substitute of perfect safety ? I hat there is a diffi¬ culty in answering the first part of the question, is proved by the * I have thought it unnecessary to mention other minor advantages of congelation as an anesthetic. An allusion, however, may he made to its power of repressing emharassing hemorrhage, in order that I may have the opportunity of stating, for the first time, that the perpetual syphon, which I placed in the Hyde Park Exhibition, on account of its use in internal congelation, is a convenient substitute for the sponge in deep operations : a constant suction is maintained by the end of the tube in the wound, whether there be blood present or not, and, instead of obstructing the sight or the dissection, as the sponge does, it assists both as a probe.