ONE OF THE CAUSES OF DEATH DURING 

 THE EXTRACTION OF TEETH UNDER 

 CHLOROFORM. 



(Reprinted from The British Medical Journal, December 4, 1875.) 



In a clinical lecture delivered by the late Professor Syme 

 several years ago, he made the somewhat remarkable statement 

 that, nothwith standing his constant use of chloroform for many 

 years, he had never had a death from it occur in his practice. 

 The reasons he gave for this success were two. " First," said 

 he, " we always use good chloroform ; and, second, we always 

 give plenty of it/' Xow, others besides Professor Syme have 

 used good chloroform — have used, indeed, chloroform by the 

 same makers, and altogether undistinguishable from that 

 employed by liim ; and yet they have had to deplore the occur- 

 rence of deaths during its administration. This fact of itself is 

 sufficient to show that the second reason given by Professor 

 Syme for his success is of great importance ; and that, in 

 administering chloroform, it is just as necessary to give plenty 

 of it as to use only the best quality. It is, indeed, very extra- 

 ordinary to see how timidity in the use of chloroform seems to 

 be associated with a more than ordinary fatality ; and how the 

 careless — one would say almost reckless — employment of it is 

 freq^uently unattended with any inconvenience. In Snowy's work 

 on Chloroform, p. 151, the following passage occurs : " In Guy's 

 Hospital and St. Thomas's, the medical officers had a strong 

 objection to narcotism by inhalation for the first two or three 

 years after the practice was introduced, and chloroform was 

 used much less generally in these institutions than in any other 

 of the liospitals of London ; yet it was precisely in these two 

 hospitals that two deaths from chloroform occurred before any 

 such accident liad happened in any other hospital in this 

 metropolis." Dr. Snow seems inclined to attribute both of 

 these deaths to the administration of chloroform ; but a careful 



