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.

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    THE QUESTION CONSIDERED, &c. If the insensibility, during surgical operations, produced by the inhalation of ether, chloroform, and other intoxicating gases, were unattended with danger, few discoveries would exceed in importance that of the anaesthetic property of these substances ; and mankind would hail with delight the announcement that, after numerous abortive efforts, some safe and certain means had, at last, been invented, of removing one of the greatest ills which humanity is subject to. Those who discovered this use of ether and chloroform, or were interested about their introduction into practice, boldly asserted their safety. Attributing the first instances of death which occurred from their use to blunders in the mode of administering them, they ridiculed the fears of those who, reasoning from analogy, could not suppose it possible that agents of such extraordinary power might be always, or even often, employed with impunity. The public were put on their guard against the remonstrances of an opponent having so “ ominous a name” as Dr. Gull; the objections of the celebrated physiologist, Majendie, wrere called natural, as he had acquired a taste for screams and groans from his vivisections in the College of France; and certain surgeons, it was said, could not proceed agreeably in their operations without such a musical accompani¬ ment. As time went on, and these fatal effects of chloroform, even in the hands of the most careful and expert, rapidly multi¬ plied, this line of defence was abandoned ; and all that can now be alleged in favour of retaining this agent in the practice of