THE PRICE OF ANAESTHESIA 



By AUGUSTUS D. WALLER, M.D., F.R.S., LL.D. 



The debate that took place a few weeks ago through the 

 columns of The Times, between the scientist who finds his 

 public too ignorant to understand him and the public who 

 finds that the scientist talks a learned jargon that is a sign and 

 symptom of his own imperfect knowledge, is one that should 

 not fail to be heeded by any person making bold to say some- 

 thing in the pages of Science Progress. For we are, all of us, 

 in relation to each other's work and thought, very public indeed ; 

 the barrier of language is raised not only between scientists and 

 public, but between scientists and scientists, and the public is 

 hardly to be condemned as ignorant if the instructors themselves 

 remain immured from each other, as well as from " the public," 

 in their private apartments of thought and language. 



If it be true that nothing new in science is achieved other- 

 wise than by " constantly thinking unto it," it is equally true 

 that " the greatest thing a human soul does in this world is to 

 see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. 



I am perhaps rashly challenging an adverse verdict by pro- 

 claiming at the outset a standard of excellence that I may hardly 

 hope to reach — that I shall, however, attempt to reach — by 

 telling in a plain way something that I have seen. 



Chloroform, the anaesthetic par excellence, that has conferred 

 upon mankind the great boon of surgical anaesthesia, is known, 

 or will one day be known, to the vast majority of us by actual 

 personal experience. That is a first reason to enlist our interest. 

 It is one of the most efficient and certain poisons known ; its 

 certainty and regularity of action are such that it is systemati- 

 cally used for mercifully getting rid of lost dogs, and an 

 unknown but considerable number of persons annually lose 

 their lives in consequence of chloroform administered for the 

 purpose of producing surgical anaesthesia — "skilfully adminis- 

 tered for a necessary surgical operation," to quote words fre- 

 quently employed by coroners' juries. The number of officially 



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