Surgical experience of chloroform / By James Miller.

  • James Miller
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    18/62 page 16
    inhaler, it is very easy to choke the patient; loithout one, it is not easy to avoid, if one were willing, the admission of a very considerable amount of atmospheric air, along with the chloroform vapours—an amount quite sufficient to avert as¬ phyxia. The explanation of the fact that in Edinburgh there has not yet been one untoward case, though chloroform has there been in constant use, by a majority of the profession, ever since its first introduction—rests very much, in my mind, on two circumstances, namely, the purity of the chloro¬ form, and the absence of machines for administering it.* The apparatus for inhaling need be of the simplest kind; anything that will admit of chloroform in vapour being brought fully in contact with the mouth and nostrils; a hand¬ kerchief, a towel, a piece of lint, a worsted glove, a night cap, a sponge. In obstetric practice, and in the private practice of surgery, a silk pocket handkerchief is perhaps most fre¬ quently used ; in Hospital surgery, we more commonly see a large dossil of lint, folded up somewhat conically—or not folded up at all. In the winter season, the glove of a clerk, dresser, or onlooker, has been not unfrequently pressed into the service. But the lint has one very obvious advantage over the others; impregnated with vapour, and soiled with spu¬ tum, its want of intrinsic value does not prevent its being summarily thrown away; whereas a good glove or handker¬ chief will be parted with regretfully. All possess the obvious and paramount advantages of being always at hand, of ad¬ mitting a sufficiency of atmospheric air along with the vapour, and of not proving either alarming or irksome to the patient. Most children, and many timid adolescents and adults, of * I have, within these few days, seen an inhaler invented by Dr. Protheroe Smith. It is very ingenious and very pretty. Still I prefer the handkerchief or lint. The instrument is iiot very portable, cannot be very cheap, may not be always at hand, is likely to seem formidable to the patient, is not so easily breathed through *, composed partly of glass, it is liable to be broken (as by an unlucky accident my own hands have demonstrated); valvular, it is apt to fall “ out of gear and, along with all of its class, it has this gx’eat disadvan- tage, the mouth-piece, once used, is soiled by sputum, and one’s ideas of clean¬ liness are somewhat outraged by its promiscuous employment. Without an instrument, each patient has his own inhaler.
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