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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    him free. Just as a man may try to deceive others, if not himself, after having dined out and taken too much. Next day he is ill—thirst, nausea, fever, mental misery, a racking headache. A visitor of condolence reaches him, and just ventures to hint that perhaps his libations had gone somewhat beyond the limits of prudence and propriety : Oh no i cer¬ tainly not. It was some roast beef, imprudentl}^^ eaten with¬ out mustard.” This caused the whole evil. It never was the wine or the whisky; always the salmon, the pudding, or the beef, “ disagreeing with the stomach.” And, in like manner, may it not have been said, Not the operation, not the operator, not the knife—the ansesthetic, the ether, the chloroform—alone it did it.” I would be far from saying that chloroform may not, single- handed, cause death ; by syncope, or in some other way. But it has not yet been convicted of this. And the cases of syncope which have occurred, during its use, are few indeed, when compared with the vast number of cases in which this agent has been employed. In this city, as already stated, there has been, so far as I know, but one example of syncope, and no fatal case ” at all. The fair inference seems to be— that, while aware of the risk of hazardous syncope being so induced, we employ the agent with all due caution—yet, aware that due caution is able to render that risk extremely slight, we are not deterred from having recourse to the agent in all suitable cases and circumstances. XXII. ANESTHESIA DOES NOT SEEM TO FAVOUR THE ACCESSION OF ERYSIPELAS. At one time I had a suspicion that erysipelas was more frequent than it ought to be, after operations in which chlo¬ roform had been employed, in the Hospital. A careful ob¬ servation, however, not only of my own cases, but also of those under the care of my colleagues, convinced me of the groundlessness of this suspicion. Erysipelas certainly pre¬ vailed to a very unpleasant extent when chloroform was first