ON CHLOROFORM. 
109 
ether was mentioned during the conversation ; and being well 
acquainted with its composition, and with the volatility, agreeable 
flavour, and medicinal properties of chloroform, I recommended him 
to try it, promising to prepare some after my return to Liverpool, 
and send it to him. Other engagements and various impediments 
prevented me from doing this so soon as I should have wished ; and 
in the mean time Dr. Simpson, having procured some in Edin- 
burgh, obtained the results which he communicated to the Medico- 
Chi rurgical Society of Edinburgh on the 10th of November, and 
which he published in a pamphlet, entitled “ Notice of a New 
Anaesthetic Agent as a Substitute for Sulphuric Ether in Surgery 
and Midwifery.” 
As an inhaled anaesthetic agent, he states that chloroform pos- 
sesses the following advantages over ether : — 
A much smaller quantity is required to produce the effect ; it is, 
therefore, more portable and transmissible than ether, and, though 
more costly, from the smallness of the quantity required, will pro- 
bably be less expensive. 
Its smell is pleasant, and does not remain attached to the clothes 
of the operator, or exhaling in a disagreeable form from the lungs 
of the patient, as so generally happens with ether. 
Its action is more rapid and complete, and generally more per- 
sistent, so that the surgeon’s time is saved. 
Most of those who have breathed both declare that the inhalation 
and influence of chloroform are much more pleasant and agreeable 
than those of ether. 
The quantity required to produce insensibility is from fifty to 
one hundred drops generally, more or less. It is applied by pour- 
ing it into a hollow sponge or a pocket handkerchief, and holding 
it over the mouth and nostrils, not too closely at first, so that the 
vapour may be fully inhaled. 
It would be out of place here to go into detail of the phenomena 
produced by the inhalation of these agents, or a minute examina- 
tion of cases : I shall, therefore, only briefly mention what may 
be most generally useful and interesting. 
The most essential point in the administration of these agents is 
to know when it has been carried far enough. Their effects vary 
with the quantity of vapour inhaled, and have been divided by 
Dr. Snow, in his treatise on ether inhalation, into five degrees. 
These run gradually into each other, and are not always clearly to 
be distinguished, but may be described as follows : — 
In the first degree the person retains a correct consciousness of 
where he is, and what is occurring around him, and a capacity 
to direct his voluntary movements : the feelings are usually agree- 
able, often highly so; .but this is not a proper state for performing 
