TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 761 
committee proposes to select some special disease and make an exhaustive study 
of it from all sides, a study which will last for two to three years. It is pro- 
posed to found a small hospital which shall be devoted entirely to cases of 
that disease during its period of study. The committee is to be a comprehensive 
one, and include all who will watch the course of the disease, or who will under- 
take research work on the subject. These will report to a central body, which 
will be responsible for the distribution of the collected facts and literature of 
the subject to those actively engaged in the work. 
5, The Effect of Chloroform on the Heart. By Professor C, 8. SHER- 
RINGTON, JL.D., F.R.S., and Miss 8. C. M. Sowron. 
This paper embodied the results of an investigation into the amount of chloro- 
form which, when administered to the heart, can dangerously embarrass its 
action. For this inquiry the authors had adopted the method, gradually evolved 
of recent years, of keeping the excised heart of a mammal alive by perfusing its 
blood-vessels with warm nutrient solutions. The heart used by them was that of 
the cat. The beating of auricle and ventricle was recorded graphically. The 
effect of chloroform was examined by allowing the perfusing fluid—pure saline, 
serum, or blood, as the case might be—to be replaced by a similar fluid to which 
chloroform in known quantity had been added. When this was done the chloro- 
form showed its effect, practically at once, by diminishing the amplitude of the 
beat without altering its rate. The amount of the diminution was proportionate, 
within limits, to the concentration of the solution of chloroform. When exhi- 
bited in saline solution, chloroform showed a depressant action even in a dilution 
of 1 part in 150,000 of the saline solution. The full amount of the depression 
caused by agiven solution was rapidly reached—e.g., in a minute—and then the 
continued administration of that solution caused no further depression, even if 
continued for half an hour at a time. That is to say, there is no cumulative 
action of the drug detectable in the isolated heart so perfused for a period of 
half an hour. On the contrary, there was generally evidence of a slight waning 
of the depression as the exhibition of the drug was uninterruptedly maintained. 
This tolerance was, however, quite evanescent, for on interrupting the perfusion 
with the chloroform solution, and then returning to it, the depression recurred in 
its original depth. On discontinuing the perfusion with chloroform solution and 
reverting to the chloroform-free fluid, the depression caused by the chloroform— 
unless the chloroform solution has been of great concentration—is extremely 
rapidly removed, even when the beat of the heart has been for many minutes 
practically abolished. This suggests the view that the effect of chloroform on the 
cardiac muscle is due to the formation of some easily dissociable compound 
between the chloroform and some active constituent of the tissue. It has been 
recently urged by Moore and Roaf that this constituent is a proteid, and in 
favour of this view is a further fact elicited inthe present inquiry. On comparing 
the amount of depression of a chloroform solution of given concentration, in salt 
solution on the one hand and in blood on the other, it is found that the effect of 
that concentration in blood is much less than it isin salt solution. In other words, 
the effect of a chloroform solution of given concentration in blood is only equivalent 
to that of a solution barely one-twelfth as concentrated in salt solution. This can be 
explained by supposing that the salt solution, though it supports the beat of the 
heart, supports it less well than does blood; but the more important part of the 
explanation seems to be that the tension of the chloroform in the blood is much 
less than in the salt solution. In other words, the difference seems referable to 
some constituent of the blood taking up and holding, in arelatively inactive form, 
a considerable fraction of the chloroform added to it. The chloroform added 
distributes itself in that complex fluid according to a coefticient of partition. It 
is only what is left over, freely dissolved in it, which is available for acting on the 
heart tissue. Comparative estimations of the depressant effect in blood, serum, 
