Hydrate of chloral / by Charles W. Parsons.

  • Parsons, Charles W. (Charles William), 1823-1893
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hydrate of chloral / by Charles W. Parsons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    children, and had never had convulsions; oedema of the lungs came on afterward, requiring appropriate and active treatment. The other was a primipara; eight months pregnant, who had had dropsical effusions and scanty urine. Exactly a month after, she gave birth to a dead child, with- out convulsions, or any special complication.] In the more intractable convulsive diseases, its results have been less satisfactory, though it is found to be a valuable palliative. In hydrophobia, it has relieved suffering, nothing more. In tetanus, it has frequently given relief, relaxing spasm and procuring sleep, but not generally ensuring recovery. In a list of 21 traumatic cases gleaned from journals, in which chloral had formed part of the treatment, there were 11 re- coveries and 10 deaths ; but I presume this proportion would not hold good if unsuccessful cases were reported as faith- fully as successful ones. The value of these reports, as illus- trating our subject, is also lessened by the fact that other medicines also were used in most instances. Mr. Macnamara, an East Indian physician, who used it as the only treatment in ten consecutive cases, reports seven of these traumatic, of which only one recovered ; two idiopathic, of which one re- covered, one coming on 15 days after childbirth which re- covered. He writes, After a little experience of the effects of chloral, it seemed to me that it had no specific influence over the tetanic spasms ; nevertheless there can be no doubt that even in the most severe cases of tetanus this drug has the power of sending the patients off into a deep sleep, and thus for the time being of preventing the tetanic spasms ; but in several instances it appeared as if the hydrate of chloral, by thus keeping back the tetanic energy, rendered it more concentrated—after deep sleep from chloral the spasms some- times returning with such terrible violence as speedily to des- troy the patient. As a hypnotic it seemed invaluable, but we must if possible do something more than put our patients to sleep in the management of bad cases of tetanus. In trismus nascentium, it has appeared more successful.
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