The induction of sleep and insensibility to pain by the self-administration of anaesthetics / by John M. Crombie.

  • Crombie, John Mann, 1844-1883.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The induction of sleep and insensibility to pain by the self-administration of anaesthetics / by John M. Crombie. 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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    if not by the patient, by the administrator, as it supplies a means of slowly increasing the chloroform atmosphere as the patient gets used to it, and afterwards of maintaining it of the same quality; the quantity of chloroform pumped into the inhaler, which of course does not need to be removed, being always as nearly as possible the same and subject to exact regulation. PART II. The dread of chloroform as a narcotic is just in regard to the administrator, unjust in regard to the agent. Chlo- roform allays pain or promotes sleep, but it also overwhelms consciousness in stupor and coma, and inevitably conducts to death precisely according to the extent it is introduced into the system. Herein it only resembles every humanly utilizable agent, w'hich passes from the production of good to evil, just as it is directed. With the administrator rests the grave responsibility of the result, who, in every case, needs to be assured, in the first place, of the purity of the agent on the one hand, and of the vital condition of his patient on the other. Chloro- form being a definite chemical compound, and conse- quently invariably answering in the same manner to the same chemical tests, which are easily applicable, its wilful adulteration would be too hazardous to be profitable, and its accidental impurities are readily detected by the manu- facturers themselves, several of whom exercise great care in this particular. Under such circumstances it is obvious the article itself may always be obtained and proved as thoroughly trustworthy as any definite and invariable pro- duet can be. The vital condition of the patient is ascertainable with an equally high degree of certainty in regard to the circumstances that would determine a fatal residt under anaesthesia. The pre-existence of really critical conditions is not veiled by any impenetrable mask, and though the origin and advance of fatal lesions may be rapid, yet not