The action of chloroform upon the heart and blood vessels / by E.A. Schäfer and H.J. Scharlieb.

  • Sharpey-Schäfer, E. A. (Edward Albert), Sir, 1850-1935.
Date:
[1903]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The action of chloroform upon the heart and blood vessels / by E.A. Schäfer and H.J. Scharlieb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    [From the Proceedings of the Physiological Society, March 21, 1903.] The action of chloroform upon the heart and blood vessels. By E. A. ScHAFER and H. J. Scharlieb. {From the Physiological Laboratory of the University of Edinburgh.) The action of chloroform upon the mammalian heart. We have lately again investigated the action of chloroform, both inhaled into the lungs and injected into the blood vessels in solution in normal saline, upon the heart in the dog. We have nothing to add to what is already known regarding its immediate effect upon the heart and circulation. As has been abundantly shown by the researches of Gaskell and Shore, McWilliam, L. Hill, Embley, and many other observers, the drug has a markedly depressant effect upon the action of the heart, eventually bringing this to a complete standstill. This effect is entirely independent of its action upon the respiratory centre. What we wish especially to insist upon is the specific nature of the action of the drug upon cardiac muscle in mammals. After the heart has been brought to a standstill as the result of inhaling a mixture of chloroform and air containing a large proportion of chloroform vapour—and this condition of standstill may occur almost instantly, but is more common after the lapse of a minute or more—the condition of the cardiac muscle is such that no kind of stimulation applied to it, directly or indirectly, will elicit any response; the heart being in a condition of diastole with the cavities more or less filled with blood and remaining permanently in this condition. This state of the heart is that which has been termed by some authors paralytic dilatation. It appears to us, however, that it is more than a condition of mere paralysis, for a paralysed muscle will still respond to direct stimulation. Mere paralysis would be such a condition as is associated with cessation of rhythm, the heart being still irritable to extraneous stimuli. But the condition of which we are speaking is one in which the irritability of the heart has disappeared, the cardiac tissue being m a permanently refractory state, associated not with systole, as in the ordinary refractory phase, but with diastole. It might almost be described as a condition of death of the tissue—precedent of course to rigor—but it is not actual death, for in many, if not in all cases, as the heart begins after some lapse of time (the circulation through its 9)