Chloroform : how shall we ensure safety in its administration? / by Patrick Black, M.D.

  • Black, Patrick, 1813-1879.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chloroform : how shall we ensure safety in its administration? / by Patrick Black, M.D. 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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    The cause of death by cliloroform, according to Dr. Snow, consists in paralysis of the heart, from the vapour of chloroform having been inhaled in too concentrated a form. He thus expresses himself: In some cases sufficient chloro- form is absorbed to arrest the action of the heart by its own influence: in another place, the heart is disabled by the direct action of the chloroform : in a case where death took place in about half a minute, he observes that the air the patient breathed must have been charged with the vapour of chloroform to a dangerous extent, and that the blood could not have been uniformly impregnated with the narcotic in so short a time as half a minute : the heart would therefore be liable to be paralysed by its direct action. It is unnecessary that I should multiply such quotations, the views of Dr. Snow being sufficiently manifested by those already cited, which imply that the vapour of chlo- roform may be inhaled in too concentrated a form, and may thus prove fatal by paralysing the heart. There is something in the evidence which may be collected from various sources on this point, which at first sight may seem to favour this explanation ; but perhaps the principal ground on which it rests is to be found in the suddenness * with which the alarming symptoms have come on. There is no circumstance which is more remarkable in all the recorded cases of death by chloroform, than the extraordinary rapidity with which the fatal symptoms have supervened. The pulse, it is said, has suddenly ceased to beat without any previous warning. The remark has been made that chloroform has been absorbed into the blood with such rapidity that there has been no time to watch its effects. In one case the time has been half a minute ; in another, seventy-two seconds ; in a third, one minute, or less; in a fourth the fatal event is thus described: she