116 REPORT—1863. 
is temporarily suspended. For the moment the author hazarded the opinion that 
the voluntary muscular power begins in the crico-thyroid muscles in approximating 
the two cartilages and rotating the cricoid on the thyroid, thus forming a point 
@appui for the continuance of muscular action in the other laryngeal muscles, 
although the crico-thyroid exert at the same time their own influence on the 
tension of the vocal cords when they depress and draw forward the thyroid and 
raise and tilt backwards the cricoid cartilage, at the same time rotating the one 
cartilage upon the other. 
The author’s experiments he considered conclusively settled the question that 
in some persons, and probably in all if attempts were made, true voluntary power 
is possessed over the muscles of the larynx, and to such an extent that the glottis 
may be closed with a distinctly audible flapping noise, chiefly by the powerful and 
rapid contraction of the thyro-arytenoid muscles and their coordinate assistants, 
but especially the crico-thyroid, which, anal with the thyro-arytenoid, regulate 
the tension, position, and vibrating length of the vocal cords. 
On the Renal Organ (the so-called Water System) in the Nudibranchiate 
Mollusks. By A. Hancock. 
On the Physiological Effect produced by Apparatus contrived for the purpose of 
causing a Vacuum upon the entire Body, or a part thereof. By Dr. Junon. 
How to Restore Drowned Persons, Patients in Chloroform Accidents, fc. By 
Cartes Kipp, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England, 
Associate of the Surgical Society, Ireland. 
Since the previous Meeting of the Association, one very remarkable instance of 
accident from inhalation of chloroform vapour had come under the personal notice 
of the author, which he was desirous to bring pepe the Section. It has been a 
sort of experimentum crucis to prove the truth of certain views recently promul- 
gated by him (as our volumes of ‘Transactions’ will testify), which it is not ne- 
cessary here again to state in detail. It has been a sort of experimentum crucis 
eae in a case of suspended animation in an hospital patient from chloro- 
orm, where certain manipulations, which have proved effectual in hundreds of 
experiments on the lower animals, poisoned on eens by chloroform, have also 
proved unexpectedly valuable in saving human life in this instance. 
In these previous papers (it may be shortly stated) the author showed that 
from a large number of experiments on animals with anzsthetic vapours, espe- 
cially by contrasting the effects of ether, chloroform, carbonic acid, carbonic 
oxide, &c., while the two latter disorganized the blood, and ether produced a kind 
of deep intoxication like alcohol, the effect of chloroform (while less persistent) 
was that of a more useful anesthetic for general purposes. It was a on that 
chloroform did not act very materially on the blood, or cause intoxication; and, 
moreover, that where deaths unhappily occurred from chloroform, the accident 
was not necessarily due, as ae taught in the schools, to deep narcotism or 
paralysis of the heart’s action (“cardiac syncope”), but rather to narcotism or 
paralysis of the voluntary respiratory nerves and muscles, which, in a secondary 
manner (but only in an incidental and not important manner), induced, as a post- 
mortem result, this so-called state of cardiac syncope. 
The author also explained, at considerable detail, the nature and probable 
proportion of accidents from this cardiac syncope, or, as he now prefers calling it, 
APN@A or muscular apnoea, as also the probable proportion or percentage of acci- 
dents that happened (perhaps as coincidences) during a state of simple SYNCOPE ; 
the modus operandi of these proximate or immediate causes being different, as also 
the plan of resuscitation adapted to apnoea or to syncope being different, founded 
on this mode of operation of these causes. 
It was explained at some length, that the present discovery of the true nature 
