ACTION OF CHLOROFORM, 
571 
two or three drachms of cold water. The ammonia renders 
the otherwise insoluble potassa salt quite soluble, whilst it 
has no immediate effect on the tartrate of lime. If then a 
portion remains undissolved after the application of the test, 
it may be regarded as an impurity. 
It is hoped that the simplicity of these tests for a -few 
important substances may not only lead to their frequent 
adoption, but that the opening of the subject may stimulate 
others to search for and publish better tests, and to extend 
the list of substances that may be easily and simply tested. — 
Abridged from the New York Journal of Medicine . 
ON THE ACTION OE CHLOROFORM. 
By M. Ludger Lallemand. 
The action of chloroform is in a direct ratio with the 
activity of respiration and circulation. The rapidity and 
intensity of anaesthetic phenomena are also in a direct ratio 
with the quantity of chloroform administered within a given 
time, viz., with the degree of concentration of the inhaled 
vapours ; but this rapidity and intensity are identical quoad 
their nature and mode of evolution. 
Chloroform, by an elective affinity, accumulates in the 
nervous centres, the excito-motor properties of which it sus- 
pends, as also the sensitive and motor power of the cerebro- 
spinal nerves. It has been found, by chemical analysis, that 
the brain and spinal marrow contain about ten times more 
chloroform than the blood and highly vascular organs (as, 
for instance, the liver), the analysis being made on equal 
weights. 
I have always seen, in chloroform inhalations, respiration 
stop before the circulation: the action of the heart and arterial 
pulsations lasted from one to six minutes after the complete 
abolition of respiratory movements. 
All the animals which were left uninterfered with after 
the breathing had ceased died, although circulation still 
existed at the time the inhalations were stopped. Ten times 
out of twelve I succeeded in recalling life into dogs and rabbits 
by means of insufflation into the lungs practised with a bel- 
lows and tube, the latter being introduced into the trachea. 
This insufflation was each time begun after the cessation of 
the heart's contractions, and was carried on until respiration 
was re-established. 
Insufflation acts by artificially eliminating the chloroform 
and by stimulating the excitability of the nervous system. 
The chloroform is thus very rapidly driven from the organism, 
and the pulmonary surface is the normal outlet for this 
