Further remarks on the cause and prevention of death from chloroform / by John Snow.

  • Snow, John, 1813-1858.
Date:
[1856]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Further remarks on the cause and prevention of death from chloroform / by John Snow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    period of seven minutes and a half after all access of air to the lungs had been prevented. The duration of life under priva- tion of air, in the human subject, resembles its duration in dogs more nearly than in still smaller animals; and even if the pungency of the vapour of chloroform should entirely prevent the patient from breathing, and the medical man could over- look the fact that respiration was not going on, it cannot be supposed that he would use the force, and have the persever- ance, to cause his patient to die slowly by asphyxia. With the breathing merely impeded, the process of dying would be still slower; but there has been no accident, during the exhi- bition of chloroform, in which death took place so slowly as to resemble that caused either by the complete or incomplete ex- clusion of air. If, therefore, any patient has died from the mere impediment to breathing, caused by the pimgency of the vapour, it must have been in a case where there was a great tendency to sudden death. An examination of the recorded cases of death from chloro- foi-m shows, indeed, that the patients did not die by impeded or interrupted respiration. To take, for example, the fatal case which occurred in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The patient breathed the chloroform from a handkerchief, which was held a little distance from the face, to aUow the au- to enter freely. An ounce of chloroform was expended in the ];rocess of inhalation. The man struggled considerably, from the eSeets of chloroform, as a certain class of patients do. The exhibition of the vapour was left off when the man began to snore, although he was still violent. He soon became quiet, however, and Dr. Dunsmure says, “I then shaved the peri- najum, and was just going to make my first incision, when one of the assistants said that his pulse was becoming weak. The Ijosterior tibial, Mr. Spence remarked, was good, but in a second or two after, both gentlemen exclaimed the pulse was gone.” Dr. Dunsmure adds, “ Those present who had an opj)ortunity of observing the resi^iration positively assert that the breathing did not cease before the pulse.” Tliis jiatient