The development of inhalation anaesthesia : with special reference to the years 1846-1900... / [Barbara M. Duncum].
- Duncum, Barbara M.
- Date:
- 1947
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The development of inhalation anaesthesia : with special reference to the years 1846-1900... / [Barbara M. Duncum]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
388/664 page 368
![' Administration with Clover's apparatus succeeded, without any untoward happenings, not only in England but in France, where I remember having seen it used at the Charite by an Englishman in Velpeau's department, and, according to the authoritative statement of Professor Erichsen (System of Surgery, latest edition), 3000 administrations of chloroform have been completed without accident. [x] ' In 1867, however, a man needing the reduction of a dis- located thumb, submitted to the inhalation of chloroform from Clover's apparatus ; he had inhaled for scarcely three minutes when he abruptly died ; only 1-7 grams of chloroform (37 drops) had been used (British Medical Journal, 2 March 1867). . . .' Richet, at this point, gave details of three further fatalities attributed to the use of Clover's chloroform apparatus. He continued : ' Finally, in 1874, a fifth death occurred, this time in the hands of Clover himself, fifteen minutes after the beginning of induction (British Medical Journal, 20 June 1874). ' What is instructive about this last happening is that, no doubt in order to exonerate his method from all blame, Clover decided that he himself must have made a mistake and added a little more chloroform than usual to the air. [2] ' These five fatal cases, which occurred within a short period, with an apparatus delivering a mixture containing a measured proportion of chloroform vapour, for which also relative safety had been claimed, appear remarkably to have cooled the en- thusiasm of our neighbours for Clover's method, for one no longer hears any mention of it.' 3 1 Erichsen, J. E. 1884 (8th ed.). The science and art of surgery. London. I, 22. Here Erichsen, in fact, wrote as follows : ' Mr. Clover, to whom we are indebted for the most accurate and scientific of these instruments [for chloroform anaesthesia], used it himself many thousands of times without an accident of any kind.' 2 In fact, in this particular case (the removal of adenoids from an adult male), Clover, after inducing chloroform anaesthesia with his usual apparatus (see Figs. 53-4), in order to allow the surgeon free access to the mouth, substituted what he termed ' the blowing apparatus '. This ' consists of a bellows moved by the foot, which drives air through a vessel containing chloroform, and forwards by means of a tube held in, or near the patient's mouth. A stop-cock regulates the current.' It was to the use of this latter instrument and not at all to his ordinary chloroform apparatus that Clover attributed the giving of an overdose which resulted in the patient's death. (Brit. med. J., 1874, h William McCardie, however, in a note pencilled in the margin of his copy of Hewitt's textbook on anaesthetics (now in the Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics) recorded that Clover had two deaths when using his chloroform apparatus (one patient being an alcoholic man, the other a woman) and he repeated a malicious little anecdote : ' Dr. Milner Moore of Coventry told me, one he saw was never published, a reporter being paid two guineas to be silent.'](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20457200_0392.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
