Chloroform : its properties and safety in childbirth / By Edward William Murphy.

  • Murphy, Edward W. (Edward William), 1802-1877.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chloroform : its properties and safety in childbirth / By Edward William Murphy. 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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    quently, this animated exhortation to high-born dames against drunkenness, becomes quite irrele- vant so far as chloroform is concerned. Violence to the person, for the purposes of rob- bery, felonious assaults, etc., etc., are among the charges against this agent. It is said that men have been robbed by its means; but then they had been previously drunk. Among the obscene publi- cations that emanate from the purlieus of London, are found histories of assaults on females success- ful through its means. A very remarkable case of abduction took place in an Irish county ce- lebrated for its crimes. An attempt was made to take by force, a lady of the highest respect- ability, as she was leaving church. Guns, pis- tols, bludgeons, were found in case of resistance, and among them a chloroform bottle to relieve hysterics! If it were possible to employ this agent in the manner such statements would lead us to believe; if a man or woman coxdd be brought under its full influence against their will, there could not be a stronger reason for prohibiting its use. But I believe this to be impossible, because it is neces- sary to do so quickly, and whenever the attempt has been made on man, or on the lower animals, to bring them rapidly under the influence of chlo- roform, there has always been the strongest resist- ance to inhale the vapour; the excited spasm of the glottis, the sense of suffocation is so great, that every effort is made not to inhale. If such then be the case when the object is to benefit the