PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF ORGANIC CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS. 147 



The nest thing to be remembered in the recovery of persons under the 

 fatal influence of chloral hydrate is to sustain the body by food. I find that 

 under even deep sleep from the narcotic, although the process of waste is less 

 than is common under natural conditions of rest, there is still a very con- 

 siderable waste in progress, which, if not made up, is against recovery. I 

 find also that the digestive and assimilating powers, thoiigh impaired diuing 

 sleep from chloral, are not arrested, but may be called into fair action with so 

 much advantage, that if two animals be cast into deep sleep by an excessive 

 quantity of the narcotic, and one be left without food and the other be artifi- 

 cially fed on warm food, one fourth of the chance of recovery is given to the 

 animal that is supplied with food. In the human subject wai-m milk, to 

 which a little lime-water has been added, is the best food. Milk is very easily 

 administered mechanically, and it should be administered in the proportion 

 of half a pint every two hours*. 



4. The fourth point to remember is to sustain the breathing ; in the 

 inferior animals the question of life or death can be made to turn on this 

 pivot. But the artificial respiration must be carried out with great gentle- 

 ness ; it must not be done by vehement movements of the body or compres- 

 sions of the chest, but by the simple process of inflating the luugs by means 

 of small bellows, through the nostrils. I have devised, in the course of the 

 researches conducted chiefly for the Association, various instruments for 

 artificial respiration, viz. a small double-acting bellows, a small syringe, and 

 a double-acting india-rubber pocket-bellows ; but I have lately made an ob- 

 servation which leads to a simpler method still, i. e. I merely attach to a 

 single hand-bellows a nostril-tube, and gently inflate the lungs, letting the 

 elasticity of the chest-wall do the work of expiration. A little valve near 

 to the nostril-tube effectually stops aR back currents from the lungs into 

 the bellows. For the human subject, five charges of air from the bellows 

 should be given at intervals of five seconds apartt. 



There is another subject of public interest connected with the employ- 

 ment of chloral hydrate. I refer to the increasing habitual use of it as a 

 narcotic. As there are alcoholic intemperants and opium-eaters, so now 

 there are those who, beginning to take chloral hydrate to relieve pain or to 

 procure sleep, get into the fixed habit of taking it several times daily and in 

 full doses. I would state from this public place, as earnestly and as forcibly 

 as I can, that this growing practice is alike injurious to the mental, the 

 moral, and the purely physical organization, and that the confirmed habit 

 of taking chloral hydrate leads inevitably to confirmed disease. The diges- 

 tion gets impaired ; natural tendency to sleep and natural sleep are impaired ; 

 the blood is changed in quality, its plastic properties and its capacity for 

 oxidation being reduced; the secretions are depraved; and, the nervous system 

 losing its regulating, controlling power, the muscles become unsteady, the 

 heart irregular and intermittent, and the mind uncertain and irritable. To 

 crown the mischief, in not a few cases already the habitual dose has been the 

 last, involuntary or rather unintentional suicide closing the scene. 



I press these facts on public notice not a moment too soon, and I add to 

 them the facts, that hydrate of chloral is purely and absolutely a medicine, 

 and that whenever its administration is not guided by medical science and 

 experience, it ceases to be a boon, and becomes a curse to mankind. 



* This question of feeding is applicable to all foi-ras of accidental narcotic poisoning. 

 In every such case the poisoning is a distinct process, and the recovery turns largely on the 

 sustainnient of tlie animal force by supply of food and of external -warmth. 



t Dr. Richardson exhibited the different instruments described. 



1.2 



