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.

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    there was a shriek; the table was overturned; hot water up¬ set, flowed smoking along the floor; the assisting surgeon, kicked in the abdomen, lay sick on the carpet; by the door the patient was disappearing—finally ; all the work of an instant. I remember, many years ago, having to sew up and band¬ age a soldier’s foot, from which I had partially dissected out two metatarsal bones ; he became so uncontrollably turbulent during the operation, and so determined that it should not be completed, that there was positively no alternative between this proceeding and allowing the risk of perhaps fatal hasmor- rhage. Not long ago, a stout young lad, with a very decided squint, came to be relieved of this. His narrative was, that before the days of chloroform he had made an attempt to submit to the operation of division of the rectus; but had lamentably failed. The operation had been begun ; but all the skill and experience of the operator could not bring it to a conclusion. Under the cover of loud cries and much wriggling, the patient had effected his escape—his eye cut indeed, but the muscle untouched. Laying him down on a sofa, chloroform was administered ; speedily he was in a sound sleep; and, during that, all the muscles of the orbit might have been divided as easily as on a dead subject. He went away, looking very straight as well as very happy; the only unpleasant remembrance of his visit being a soiled condition of his jacket, which had come inopportunely in contact with some half-digested mutton-pies—which had been taken ra¬ ther close upon the chloroform. Operating for strabismus in the young, with and without chloroform, always suggests to me as an illustration, the attempt to shoot a lively and perhaps experienced rabbit, jerking itself like lightning through furze, as contrasted with the deliberate slaughter of a sleeping inno¬ cent on the sunny face of its burrow. The latter, though a tolerably sure event, is doubtless unsportsmanlike. But it is almost needless to say that we do not look for sport in surgery. In most operations on the eye, chloroform is likely to prove a great assistance. For, when the patient is placed in com-