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Safety, as applied to remedial agents, is a relative term. Very- 

 few articles in our materia medica are absolutely safe, if prescribed 

 for all patients and in any quantities ; while many of them are safe 

 only when given with the utmost caution, and in the most minute 

 doses. Strychnine, morphine, Prussic acid, aconitine, are familiar 

 examples of this truth. But this extreme minuteness of dose, and 

 the care with which the remedy must be adapted to the case, are not 

 considered as valid objections to the use of these articles, and they 

 are accordingly prescribed daily, by our most cautious and judicious 

 practitioners. If, therefore, the quantity in which chloroform can 

 be given with safety, and at the same time with efficiency can be 

 ascertained, and if we can also point out the peculiarities of condi- 

 tion or constitution, if any, which forbid its employment, we shall 

 then have brought it within the rule which regulates the use of all 

 the more potent articles of the materia medica, with this additional 

 advantage and safeguard, that from its mode of administration 

 there is not as much danger of its being given in over-doses, and it 

 can, of course, never be given by mistake, an accident which has so 

 often happened with fatal results with other articles. 



Your committee think that these conditions, to a reasonable extent, 

 can already be complied with in respect to the letheon and chloroform, 

 and that there is every reason to believe that farther experience and 

 closer observation will enable us to adopt rules for their use, as pre- 

 cise and as definite as have been laid down with respect to ergot. 



The effects of these agents seem in some respects better adapted 

 to the practice of midwifery than to general surgery, for in the latter, 

 generally speaking, unless the anaesthetic effect is fully produced — 

 unless the sleep is profound, there is danger of the patient becoming 

 restless, and his being injured rather than benefited by the inhala- 

 tion — whereas, in cases of obstetrics, it is by no means essential that 

 the soporific effect should be complete in order to afford great relief. 

 If the practitioner is timid, and apprehensive of doing harm, or is 

 in doubt whether his patient will bear it well, let him give a small 

 quantity, as twenty drops, and he will find that this small dose will 

 have a beneficial effect in benumbing the acuteness of sensation, and 

 in allaying that nervous excitability from which most of our obstetric 

 patients suffer so much. Let him observe the mode in which his 

 patient is affected by this minute quantity, and he can repeat the 

 inhalation, increase it or withdraw it, as his judgment dictates. We 

 repeat, this gradual mode of producing the peculiar results of this 

 agent may be resorted to where the practitioner is in doubt, and it 

 may be pronounced, we believe, in all cases to be safe. In most 

 instances, perhaps, where the accoucheur is confident in his own 



