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.

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    excellent mode of exciting hysterical disturbance; but, duly administered, I should never dream of ranking tendency to hysteria as a contra-indication. Often I have seen paroxysms of violent hysteria, induced by other causes, calmed down to the stillness of soft sleep by means of chloroform. In order to prevent hysterical or other excitement, on emergence, it is of much importance to allow the patient ab¬ solute quietude. To talk to, joke with, or interrogate the patient after the operation, while stupor still remains, is cer¬ tainly reprehensible. Seldom, if ever, does it fail to produce excitement. Kecovery of consciousness should, in ordinary circumstances, be entirely the patient’s own doing. Touch his eyelid, or say but a word, and he may spring up, wild; but leave him quite alone, in silence, and, if possible, in dark¬ ness also, and he may sleep on for an hour or more, awaking at last as if from a common slumber. Another little matter of some importance is, to have all dressing and handling of the wound completed, before the patient is permitted to emerge from stupor. And the reason for this is twofold:—1. That the patient may be saved from unnecessary pain, and the risk of troublesome ex¬ citement. 2. That the surgeon and attendants may be them¬ selves exempted from harm; for, by a neglect of such pre¬ caution, unpleasant blows may be sustained from a muscular leg or arm excited to involuntary aggression. It was only last Saturday that I was removing haemorrhoids and loose skin, by scissors, from a gentleman under chloroform. During emergence, a little bleeding showed itself; and I stooped to sponge, and look for a vessel. In this occupation, I was dis¬ turbed by feeling a smart shock of air on my head and face, accompanied with a noise like that of a bird or bullet in swift flight. Looking up, I saw my assistant, convulsed with laughter, endeavouring to restrain some wild movements of the patient, who had become angry and pugilistic in his sleep. I had been grazed by a backhanded blow of his flst, delivered with such intensity of half unconscious purpose, as would certainly, if it had struck, have made me as recumbent and perhaps as unconscious as himself.