THE PRICE OF ANAESTHESIA 621 



hands of a few anaesthetists. But for one reason or another, 

 graduated apparatus has not met with general favour ; instru- 

 ments have been too dear, or too troublesome, or have failed 

 to fulfil the promise of their inventors and advertisers. Each 

 inventor, whether French or English or German, has had his 

 instrument patented ; and the consequence has been that each 

 instrument has been advertised as perfect, whereas as a matter 

 of fact no instrument can be perfect — every instrument requires 

 to be used intelligently. 



I think it may be useful to describe the ordinary daily 

 practice of this laboratory towards animals, and to indicate as 

 briefly as possible how I should propose that a similar pro- 

 cedure should be applied to hospital anaesthesia. And I shall 

 at once premise, in reply to the inevitable objection that the 

 method is too troublesome for hospital use, (1) that it is not too 

 troublesome for daily use in the laboratory for animals, (2) that 

 several thousand animals have been anaesthetised in this 

 laboratory during the last five years, without the accidental loss 

 of a single animal, and (3) that, even admitting that the procedure 

 is more troublesome than the ordinary practice, it is not 

 unreasonable to expect as much trouble to be bestowed upon 

 the safe anaesthesia of a patient in a hospital as is bestowed 

 upon an animal in a laboratory. In point of fact, the trouble of 

 application would be smaller in the case of man than it is in 

 that of an animal. 



The procedure in this laboratory as regards animals is as 

 follows : 



First step. — The animal is placed in a closed glass chamber (a 

 large bell-jar, or a small cupboard with plate-glass front), into 

 which chloroform-and-air of desired percentage is pumped. The 

 latter is provided by pumping air by a small electric motor 

 through an ordinary wide-mouthed bottle containing liquid 

 chloroform, into a large-mixing chamber (capacity = about 30 

 litres), containing the chloroform balance and provided with an 

 inlet from the chloroform bottle and an outlet to the animal 

 chamber. The flow of air is rendered uniform and of suitable 

 volume per minute by means of an elastic reservoir and a per- 

 forated stop on the course of the supply tube. The percentage 

 of the mixture administered is watched on the pointer scale 

 (and if desired recorded by a light pen). It is regulated by 

 varying the depth of a tube in the chloroform bottle and by 



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