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ON ANAESTHETICS 167 
point gained if this serious drawback, together with the depression that attends 
it, can be got rid of. 
Junker’s inhaler acts admirably in experienced hands, but the working 
of the bellows is a somewhat irksome business ; and there is, besides, the great 
disadvantage of a special apparatus which may not be always at hand, and 
which, if not in frequent use, is liable to get out of order. And I cannot but 
think that, if the valve of the mask is not properly managed, there will be danger 
of the chloroform being given in too concentrated a form. 
A much more simple way of giving chloroform in a continuous and equable 
manner is that of dropping it frequently, by means of a drop-bottle, upon a 
flannel bag stretched over a wire frame, as was, I believe, first suggested by 
the late Dr. Skinner, of Liverpool. The drop-bottle may be very simply made 
by providing an ordinary bottle with a second cork traversed by a piece of glass 
tube sufficiently small in calibre to allow only one or two minims to escape at 
once when the bottle is momentarily inverted. Special drop-bottles of more 
durable and convenient construction may be got from the instrument-makers ; 
but for an emergency a cork, with a small notch cut out of one side, introduced 
into a common bottle, will answer the purpose sufficiently well. By these 
means chloroform may be given in a very steady, continuous manner; and 
some who are accustomed to this method speak very highly in its favour. But 
Dr. Skinner’s bag is needlessly large; and from this circumstance, and also 
from the very accurate manner in which it applies itself to the face by means 
of an elastic band at its orifice, it must be apt, unless cautiously used, to accumu- 
late too large a quantity of chloroform ; and I know that deaths have occurred 
under its use. 
A much smaller frame is also sold by the instrument-makers, with a corre- 
spondingly smaller flannel bag, fitting, like Skinner’s, accurately to the face. 
This apparatus proved on trial amply adequate, anaesthesia being very rapidly 
induced, with extremely little consumption of chloroform. But, even though 
so much smaller, the closely fitting bag seemed to me liable to the danger of 
giving the chloroform too strong, especially when the breathing is shallow. 
I therefore made trials with a piece of flannel stretched over the small frame, 
but having an interval of about half an inch between its border and the sk'n 
of the face ; and I found that a piece with an area of nine square inches arranged 
in this way, and kept constantly moist with chloroform, failed to induce anaes- 
thesia within a reasonable time in an adult male, but answered the purpose 
well if a piece of rag was thrown lightly round the interval between the flannel 
and the skin, so as to check, but not altogether prevent, the flowing away of 
the heavy vapour of the chloroform. Thus I seemed to have arrived at an 
