ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF THE METHYL COMPOUNDS. 177 
(indeed as soon as the last minim was injected) the animal was convulsed and 
dead. As quickly as the operation, with every appliance at hand, could be 
performed, the thorax was laid open, and the lungs and heart exposed. The 
heart on both sides was found firmly contracted on firmly clotted blood 
which filled its cavities. The lungs were intensely congested with blood, 
also firmly coagulated, so that they cut like substance of liver; the brain 
Was quite natural. Excited by the galvanic current, the muscles of respira- 
tion and the voluntary muscles responded well for an hour, but the heart 
could be roused to no sign of motion. 
Here, then, we had a proof that chloroform carried directly to the heart 
may stop the heart primarily. In this sense, however, it does not act by 
paralyzing, in the ordinary sense of that word, but by exciting a vigorous 
contraction, prolonged to the death. 
By injecting chloroform through the aorta over the whole body of an 
animal just dead, I saw the same sudden and permanent contraction univer- 
sally developed in the muscular system. 
The conclusions I have up to this time arrived at in respect to the action 
of chloroform and all the other chlorides of the methyl and ethyl series, are :— 
1. That when these are administered by inhalation to healthy bodies, their first 
action, as they diffuse through the different organs, is exerted directly on the 
muscles, which they call into powerful contraction. 2. That this action, 
extending further to the arterial muscular system, suspends the influx of 
blood, generally leading, in return, to relaxation of the common muscles, and 
to arrest of cerebral function. 3. That the heart, if its coronary canals 
and its walls be good, lives through the catastrophe better than any other 
structure, and, in short, is the organ on whose power the ultimate recovery 
rests. 4. That death from chloroform in the healthy animal is due to failing 
respiratory power, and, above all, to contraction of the pulmonary artery, by 
which the current of blood from the right to the left side is pzevented. 
This view, in respect to animals, associates all the phenomena in death 
from chloroform ; it accounts for the stage of muscular excilement, the ces- 
sation of the beat of the pulse while the heart is still beating, the continu- 
ance of the action of the heart when the respiration has stopped, and the 
white and bloodless condition in which the lungs are invariably discovered 
when death is complete. 
This same view tallies moreover with all the known facts respecting sudden 
death under the influence of the chlorides in cases where the heart is not 
healthy, where, unable to live through the preliminary excitement into 
which, with the other muscles, it is thrown, it ceases action altogether—ceases 
for the same reason that it ceased in the animal when the narcotic was thrown 
direct into it, I mean because it is overcome by the excitation to which it is 
subjected. A little want of elasticity in the coronary arteries, an undue ten- 
dency to contraction in them, a deficiency of muscular substance, an intersti- 
tial deposit in the muscle,—any one of these conditions is amply sufficient to 
account for death from the heart under the influence of the exciting chlo~ides. 
Under the action of the oxides of methyl and ethyl the living body avoids 
these dangers to a degree ag yet little understood. These from the first pro- 
dace very little excitability of the muscular mechanism ; and when they ulti- 
mately kill, the act is not by contraction of vessels, but by slow asphyxia, the 
gradual extinction of oxidation from the exclusion of air. 
| Hence, after death by ether, the lungs are not found blanched, but con~ 
gested, the heart still active, the muscles flaccid, and the blood in all the 
tissues dark in colour, 
1868, 0 
