152 ON ANAESTHETICS 
needful to suspend the administration, by taking the cloth entirely away from 
the neighbourhood of the face. To act otherwise would be to pour in a fatal 
dose after artificially removing the natural safeguard against its entrance. To 
give a caution against so obvious a breach of physiological principle may seem 
superfluous, but I know by experience that it is not uncalled for. 
I have admitted in the foregoing article that idiosyncrasy may have been 
the cause of death in some anomalous cases which have been put on record. 
We certainly see strange varieties in the effects produced by chloroform both 
on the cerebral and the spinal centres. Some persons when inhaling it le from 
first to last as in a tranquil slumber ; some, before they succumb to its narcotic - 
influence, struggle with great violence, without uttering a sound; others bawl 
lustily, while some sing sweetly, and others again are disposed to converse quietly 
though incoherently with those around them. There are also remarkable 
differences in the relation of sensation to consciousness under chloroform. As 
a general rule they are affected simultaneously, but we now and then see patients 
insensible to the pain of an operation, though perfectly conscious of all that is 
passing. Equally various are the effects upon the spinal functions. The 
absence of winking when the eyeball is touched with the finger, though a very 
good general guide to the abolition of reflex action in the body generally, is 
by no means an unvarying indication. In some persons that particular function 
is abolished earlier or later than usual. Relaxation of the sphincters of the 
bowel and bladder is a result of chloroform happily only occasionally met with, 
and various other instances of exceptional phenomena might be mentioned. 
Another example of peculiarity, more closely bearing upon the question of 
death from chloroform, has come under my observation in two instances during 
the last nine years, viz. cessation of the movements of the thorax, or in other 
words suspension of the function of the respiratory ganglia, without any pre- 
liminary laryngeal obstruction, although there was not, so far as I could judge, 
anything unusual in the mode of administration. In both cases natural breath- 
ing soon returned under artificial respiration maintained by intermitted pressure 
on the false ribs, while the tongue was drawn forward, accompanied by occasional 
slapping of the face and chest with a cold wet towel. But the condition was 
sufficiently alarming while it lasted. The patients were both elderly, feeble 
subjects, and I may remark that if I ever give chloroform with any degree of 
apprehension, it is to the aged and infirm. 
Another closely allied instance of idiosyncrasy once presented itself in my 
practice. I had removed under chloroform a small epithelial cancer from the 
eyebrow of a feeble old woman, nothing unusual having occurred, when I noticed 
that the breathing assumed a peculiar sighing character, and the intervals 
