ON CHLOROFORM. 
105 
law : it ought to be an honorarium. The way I consider the adop- 
tion of a single faculty in medicine would have a serious effect on 
the pocket of the general practitioner would be this : — if you have 
one faculty, that faculty must all be brought to the level of the 
lowest ; there would be no grades, no distinctions, nothing elevated 
in it ; and if you brought all to the level of the lowest, it would be 
a run for cheapness : you would have it degraded into a trade ; they 
would be cheaply educated, and they would compete with regard 
to the cheapness with which they could attend patients. 
Chloroform, the new Agent for producing Insensibility 
to Pain by Inhalation. 
Read by Mr. D. Waldie at the Meeting of the Liverpool Literary and Philo- 
sophical Society, held at the Royal Institution , on the evening of Monday, 
Nov. 29, 1847. 
[From “ The Pharmaceutical Times.”] 
The property of various substances existing in the state of gas 
or vapour to affect the animal constitution has been long known, 
more particularly with respect to the production of deleterious or 
poisonous effects; and the same fact has been observed in the 
case of substances found in ordinary circumstances in the solid or 
liquid form, when brought by artificial means into the state of 
vapour, and conveyed into the lungs. And this has been observed 
more generally in the class of substances called narcotics than pro- 
bably in any other; in the smoking of opium or tobacco for instance, 
or in the intoxicating effect of the atmosphere in apartments con- 
taining large quantities of wine or spirits. 
The discovery, in the latter part of last century, of the constitu- 
tion of the atmosphere, and the elimination of various substances 
in the gaseous or aeriform state, possessing very distinct and dif- 
ferent properties, opened up a field of investigation on this subject 
previously unknown. The remarkable and highly-interesting dif- 
ference in the relations of oxygen and carbonic acid to combustion 
and life led to the knowledge of these properties in other gases and 
vapours. 
Great expectations, based on theoretical considerations, were 
entertained at that time by many of the probable utility of gaseous 
bodies as remedial agents. Dr. Beddoes, one of the most enthusi- 
astic of these theorists, thought that all diseases might be cured by 
breathing a medicated atmosphere, and in 179S opened a pneuma- 
tic institution at Bristol for that purpose. It is well known that 
his expectations were disappointed, as the scheme was unsuccess- 
ful ; but it was the means of introducing to him Davy, then a 
VOL. XXI. P 
