Surgical experience of chloroform / by James Miller.

  • Miller, James.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical experience of chloroform / by James Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    the less muscular excitement—less both as to intensity and duration ; and vice versa. There is no doubt that there are great differences in the chloroform obtained from different manufacturers, or even from the same manufacturers at differ- ent times; and that the impure forms are most specially prone to cause undue muscular excitement. The evils of this have been repeatedly witnessed ; and it is to be hoped that the dis- tinguished promoter of chloroform as an anaesthetic, as well as all others who have the power and opportunity, will inter- est themselves so that this agent may be produced not only at a diminished cost, but also of a purity, and consequently of a power, hitherto unknown. VI. THE ADMINISTRATION MUST BE WATCHED BY A COMPE- TENT PERSON. It will not do to make over this duty to an ordinary by- stander. The administrator must be professional, expert, and, if possible, accustomed to the work. And the value of such an one points chiefly to two things; first, the adroit superinduc- tion of anaesthesia, also maintaining it of the requisite inten- sity and duration ; second, the watching of its play, as it may be called, with a view towards guarding against all chance of accident. The latter is obviously the more important. The administrator's eyes should never be off the patient's face. He wishes to see him snoring—perhaps smoking a pipe, his eyes fixed, his body pliant and motionless ; he expects to see him bluish in the face, sputtering saliva rather freely from the mouth, and seeming to the inexperienced eye on the very verge of apoplexy; but on the instant that this latter sight presents itself, the chloroform is withdrawn, not to be reponed till all such signs of complete and indeed extreme impression shall have passed away. The simulated apoplexy does not alarm him ; he knows it as a safe sign of the full effect of his agent; but it warns him that he has gone far enough, and that for a time inhalation must be discontinued. With