632 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



which has just been indicated rests largely upon physical 

 experiments as to the relative solubility of anaesthetic sub- 

 stances in water and in olive oil. It is true that many 

 anaesthetics, chloroform among them, are soluble in all pro- 

 portions in oil, while water takes up only 72 per cent. ; but 

 a convincing explanation of what occurs in anaesthesia is not 

 likely to be gained by studies of this nature, no matter how 

 accurately they are carried out ; and, moreover, they will not 

 afford an explanation of the action of such narcotics as morphia 

 or conia. For these Overton, to whom we owe the introduction 

 of the term "lipoid," suggests the existence of combinations 

 between the drug and cell-protoplasm, a view which Benjamin 

 Moore and H. E, Roaf have particularly put forward as a 

 possible explanation for the action of all anaesthetic substances. 

 Some of these, such as chloroform, may form easily assimilable 

 and dissociable compounds with the living protoplasm ; others, 

 such as morphia, may form more stable compounds, and will 

 therefore probably be more specific in their action. 



The attention of Benjamin Moore and H. E. Roaf was first 

 attracted to the subject of anaesthesia by witnessing some 

 experiments performed by C. S. Sherrington and S. C. M. 

 Sowton. If a mammal be killed and the heart removed, this 

 organ can be shown to beat regularly for more than four 

 days if it is supplied with a weak, watery solution of certain 

 inorganic salts, provided that the liquid is saturated with 

 oxygen gas. The heart, therefore, will exhibit a prolonged 

 period of activity outside the body when there is no blood 

 supplied to the organ. This demonstration we owe to F. S. 

 Locke.^ A concentration of chloroform, added to the liquid 

 which feeds the heart, of i in 100,000, produces a constant effect ; 

 the vigour of each individual heart-beat is diminished. This 

 effect rapidly appears, and persists for just as long as chloroform 

 of this low but adequate concentration is bathing the interior of 

 the heart. When the solution containing chloroform is replaced 

 with Locke's fluid the effect on the heart's beat disappears 

 and the contractions regain their normal vigour, to again sink 

 when the weak chloroform solution is substituted. From this 

 experiment, to quote Moore and Roaf, it was clear that chloro- 

 form exerted no cumulative action on the living protoplasm of 

 muscle ; that is to say, the effect on the cardiac beat was the 

 ' Zentralbl . f. Physiol. December 3c, 1905. 



