Surgical experience of chloroform / By James Miller.

  • Miller, James, 1812-1864.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical experience of chloroform / By James Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/62 (page 24)
    Ill evidence of the great extent to which inhalation of chloroform may be carried, with safety to life, I may mention, that a patient afflicted with intense neuralgia, and accustomed to use chloroform as an anaesthetic during the paroxysms, lately consumed thirty-two ounces within twenty-four hours; and the only evil of this overdose (for an excess it certainly must be considered) was a degree of nausea which the patient did not shake off for some days. VIII. THE YOUNGER THE PATIENT THE EASIER THE INDUC¬ TION OF ANESTHESIA, UP TO ADULT AGE. To this general statement of course there are exceptions ; but in the main I believe it true. With children and adoles¬ cents, I have never seen any considerable postponement of the desired effects; and the premonitory muscular excitement, if it occur at all, is slight, and especially transient. On young children its effects are extremely beautiful. They may give one or two cries, when the stimulus of the vapour is first felt; for a very brief space of time there may be a clutching of the hands and kicking of the feet; then they fall into a soft, deep sleep, seldom truly stertorous; in that state they may be long retained, with very slight reapplication of the agent; and during it, the otherwise most painful and alarming surgical doings may be proceeded with, without a shriek or shiver on the part of the unconscious innocent.^ I have re¬ peatedly, in my own house, for example, applied red-hot cauteries to the interior of erectile tumours, thrusting them, one after another, into various parts of the morbid tissue; and the patient has left the house almost without having given utterance to a single sign of pain or discomfort. There is, perhaps, nothing so painful to the operating surgeon—more especially if he happen to be himself a father—as the being compelled, in the exercise of his profession, to inflict tortures on young children, and to have his ears stunned with their piercing cries. To be saved from all this now, is felt a boon of no slight magnitude.