CHLORAL AND OTHER NARCOTICS. 493 



bier of water, and swallowed the large dose so prepared. He was 

 found insensible, with the bottle and glass by his bedside. He did 

 not fully regain consciousness for sixty hours, but finally made a good 

 recovery. 



The occurrence of this experience led me into a new line of re- 

 search, namely, to find out what was the best mode of maintaining 

 life while the body is under the influence of a deep sleep from the 

 hydrate. This new research disclosed that the great object of treat- 

 ment should be to sustain the animal temperature. I found that, like 

 alcohol, the tendency of chloral hydrate is to reduce the vital fire, and 

 that of two animals under chloral, one in a warm, the other in a cold 

 atmosphere, the recovery of the one in the warm and the death of the 

 one in the cold atmosphere could be reduced to a matter of positive 

 system or rule. I had soon to publish that lesson, and to indicate 

 that there were dangers ahead in respect to the use of chloral hydrate, 

 which dangers would have to be scientifically combated. 



Within a year after the introduction of chloral hydrate into medi- 

 cal use another new truth dawned on me. One morning the friends 

 of a gentleman called on me, bringing a bottle of chloral hydrate and 

 a copy of a medical paper containing a lecture of mine relating to the 

 action of the drug. They had noticed for some time past that the 

 gentleman, about whom they were anxious, had been very peculiar in 

 manner, exhibiting signs resembling those of intoxication from alcohol, 

 but with more than alcoholic somnolency. He was an alcoholic, and 

 sometimes he was apt to have spells of inebriation ; but the phenom- 

 ena more recently observed were somewhat different. Watching him 

 closely as their alarms increased, they detected that he was in the 

 habit of dosing himself with some substance which he kept in a series 

 of bottles, of which he had seventeen or eighteen in stock, and one of 

 which they brought to me. The bottle they brought contained chloral 

 hydrate, and it turned out that all the bottles contained, or had con-' 

 tained, the same. By and by this gentleman came to me himself, and 

 confessed that he was in the habit of taking the chloral three or four 

 times in the twenty-four hours. He took it at first, after reading my 

 lecture on its medicinal uses, in order to procure sleep. It answered 

 his purpose so well that he became induced to repeat the process, and 

 in a little time got what he called his new craving. He presented a 

 series of special symptoms from the chloral which had some of the 

 characters of jaundice and some of the characters of scurvy. These 

 symptoms were additional to the signs of brain and nervous disturb- 

 ance caused by the chloroform derived from the chloral, and they were 

 easily accounted for. The chloral, in undergoing decomposition with- 

 in the body, divides into two products, the one chloroform, the other 

 an alkaline formate, a soluble salt, which makes the blood unduly 

 fluid, and acts much in the same manner as I found again by direct 

 experiment with it that common salt does, or the mixture of pickling 



