122 
POPULAE SCIENCE EEVIEW. 
1st. That after suture of a divided nerve, sensational and motor powers are 
perceptibly restored in a few hours. 
2nd. That this restoration is progressively established. 
3rd. Sensations of touch are restored before sensations of pain. 
4th. The operation is by no means a very painful one. 
5th. The suture may be made of nerves of a very considerable size and 
importance. — Vide Comjptes Renclus, t. xviii. No. 25, and t. xix. No. 3. 
The Report of the Chloroform Committee was issued some time since, and 
from it we learn that the strongest doses of chloroform vapour when admitted 
freely into the lungs destroy animal life, by arresting the action of the heart,, 
whilst by moderate doses the heart’s action is weakened some time before 
death ensues, the respiratory function being generally arrested prior to the 
cessation of the heart’s pulsation. Death is due to the failure of both func- 
tions. In order to administer chloroform safely, the proportion of vapour 
should not exceed 3^ per cent. Its effects should be carefully watched, and 
the inhalation suspended when the required anaesthesia is produced. The 
energy with which chloroform acts and the extent to which it depresses the 
force of the heart’s action, render it necessary to exercise great caution in its 
administration, and suggest the expediency of looking for another and less 
objectionable anaesthetic. Ether, says the report, produces requisite insensi- 
bility, but is slow and uncertain in its action. It is, however, less dangerous 
in its operation than chloroform. The committee on the whole concur in the 
general opinion, which in this country has led to the disuse of ether as an 
inconvenient anaesthetic. A mixture composed by measure of three parts of 
ether, two parts of chloroform, and one part of alcohol, is regarded as a safer 
agent than pure chloroform. Artificial respiration is the most certain means 
of restoring life after poisoning by anaesthetics of any kind. By this means 
resuscitation may generally be accomplished after natural respiration has 
ceased, provided the heart continued to act. If due care be taken in thn 
administration of chloroform, no apparatus need be employed. Free admis- 
sion of air with the anaesthetic is the one thing necessary. Three and a half per 
cent, is the average amount, and four and a half the maximum proportion of 
chloroform to atmospheric air, which is either needful or safe. If air be freely 
admitted with the vapour, any apparatus may be employed, though none is 
necessary. 
Spontaneous Discharge of a foreign Body from the Antrum, in which it had 
remained for forty-two years. — A very curious case of this kind occurred this, 
year at Bologna. The patient, a man aged sixty-five, was admitted intO’ 
hospital for rheumatism, and some tune after he discharged with some effort 
from the left nostril a portion of the blade of a knife, about an inch and a half 
long. When questioned as to the origin of this foreign body, the man remem- 
bered that in the summer of 1822, during a midnight brawl, he received three 
blows with a knife, one of which wounded him above the left cheek-bone. In 
forty-eight hoius he considered himself cured, although there was some swelling, 
and he had a sensation of the presence of a hard body above the third upper 
molar of the left side. He afterwards felt a hard body in the left nostril, from 
which pus and occasionally blood came at intervals. Signor Koudolphi detected 
a longitudinal depression of about an inch and a half in length on the surface 
of the alveoli at the part referred to. Upon iutroduciug the finger into the 
