2 2 ANIMAL ELECTRICITY. LECTURE I. 



led to its widespread preference over all prior and 

 subsequent rivals, so that in this country at least, 

 the designation " chloroformist " has almost become 

 synonymous with ''anaesthetist," and many surgeons — 

 Lord Lister at their head — put all other anaesthetic 

 agents aside in favour of chloroform. Nevertheless, 

 like all potent drugs — potent because they are toxic — 

 perhaps above most potent drugs — chloroform, while 

 conferring quickly and effectually the great boon of 

 unconsciousness, exacts heavy toll. Not too heavy, 

 perhaps, if chloroform were the only anaesthetic in the 

 field, but far too heavy when we consider that there 

 are other, if less potent anesthetics to hand, amply 

 adequate to the needs of nine-tenths of the cases for 

 which chloroform has been used with fatal results. ^ 



It has been said that experimental physiology has 

 afforded no guidance in the use of anaesthetics — that 

 clinical experience is our only guide. I demur to this 

 statement, and shall ait once exhibit to you a contrast 

 experiment representing, as in a nutshell, the compara- 

 tive efficacy of these two principal re-agents. 



^ Dr. Lauder-Brunton, although pleading emphatically in favour 

 of chloroform as against ether, expresses himself as follows in his 

 Text-Book of Pharmacology (3rd Ed., 1893, P- ^o^) • 



"The operations in which death during chloroform chiefly 

 " occurs are short and comparatively slight, though painful, such 

 *' as extraction of teeth, and evulsion of the toe-nail — operations 

 '* in which the introduction of deep chloroform anaesthesia might 

 '* be regarded as superfluous, and involving a waste of time." 



