Chloroform : how shall we ensure safety in its administration? / by Patrick Black, M.D.

  • Black, Patrick, 1813-1879.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chloroform : how shall we ensure safety in its administration? / by Patrick Black, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    stances in which he is exposed to its operation. For instance, an animal may be placed in a vat over a ferment- ing mass, in which the atmosphere around consists either entirely of carbonic acid, or of air which is very highly charged with it. What are the phenomena which would be observed in such a condition ? The animal would im- mediately fall down; struggling or convulsions would ensue, speedily followed by insensibility; and death would take place within two or three minutes—perhaps within one minute—from the commencement of exposure. An animal so killed would be suffocated or asphyxiated : it would be placed in a condition in which the expansion and move- ments of the chest would be impossible : the circulation would be forcibly arrested, and death would in consequence imuiediately ensue. But let an animal be placed in air containing a certain, but still a respirable, quantity of car- bonic acid, the phenomena which would then be manifested would be totally dift'erent: respiratory movements would take place without interruption ; the circulation would pro- ceed unaffected,—at least, not violently affected ; delirium might ensue, to be followed by sleep, becoming gradually deeper, and at length comatose; the circulation would become more sluggish, the temperature of the body sink, and death would ensue without any of those symptoms of violence which are characteristic of asphyxia. In the former case death would take place by asphyxia; in the latter, by narcotism. 1 am aware that the view which I have thus advanced is not that which is always given by physiologists. They would perhaps say that in the one case the animal is sud- denly or rapidly asphyxiated, and that in the other he is slowly asphyxiated,—that it is only a question of degree, and not of essentially different ])hysiological manifestations. I cannot accept this conclusion : the })henonicna in question