218 NATURE AND LIFE. 



bility produced by chloroform is prolonged* in animals 

 when they have taken opium. Nussbaum, having made a 

 subcutaneous injection of acetate of morphine with a pa- 

 tient under operation, and who was put under the action of 

 chloroform, noticed that the subject did not wake as usual, 

 but slept on quietly for twelve hours. During this sleep 

 he was insensible to pain. Goujin and Labbe 1 have con- 

 firmed this fact, and made use of it in their practice, and 

 have found that, by uniting weak doses of chloroform and 

 of a salt of morphine, we may effect complete insensibil- 

 ity for several hours, without sleep necessarily attending 

 it. Rabuteau also performed the following experiment : 

 A dog to which five centigrammes of narceine had been ad- 

 ministered, and which was then put to sleep by chloroform, 

 had no feeling on awaking. It walked about in the labo- 

 ratory, recognized a voice calling it, but had wholly lost the 

 use of its sensitive nervous system. It could be pinched, 

 or pricked, or its toes stepped on, without the least show 

 of suffering. This singular condition, in an animal com- 

 pletely awake, lasted some hours ; the next day sensibility 

 had returned. 



From chloroform to chloral the transition is natural. 

 Chloral, which was discovered in 1832 by Dumas and 

 Liebig, differs from common alcohol in* having an ex- 

 cess of chloride, and less of hydrogen. 1 For nearly forty 

 years this substance remained unused ; its physiological 

 qualities were not suspected. At length, in 1868, a Ger- 

 man chemist, Liebreich, remembering that chloral may be 

 reduced by alkalies into chloroform and formic acid, asked 

 himself whether such a decomposition might not occur in 

 the living organism as well as in a laboratory crucible. 

 He tries the experiment, and Nature replies by an em- 

 phatic yes. Chloral is decomposed in the system on con- 



1 This substance may be regarded as tri-chlorated aldehyde. Chemists 

 represent it under the formula C 2 HC1 3 0. 



