104 
REPORT ON CHLOROFORM. 
ministration is not generally necessary or desirable, a handkerchief or towel, so folded as 
to prevent blistering of the face and to allow free admixture of atmospheric air, being 
sufficient for the purpose. 
(c/) Use of chloroform in diseases of women and children .—In the treatment of diseases 
of women, chloroform may be employed to facilitate and lessen the pain of certain exa¬ 
minations. In cases of spurious pregnancy and phantom tumours, by relaxing the ab¬ 
dominal parieties, it may assist in demonstrating their true characters ; and acting in the 
same way, it may help the practitioner to define more accurately the character and rela¬ 
tions of other abdominal and pelvic tumours, or to detect feigned disease. 
As a therapeutic agent, its inhalation, and external application in the form of a lini¬ 
ment, may be usefully employed to allay pain in some cases of severe dysmenorrhcea, 
neuralgia, and the like. 
There is accumulated testimony in favour of chloroform inhalation proving serviceable 
in various spasmodic diseases of women and children, as 'whooping-cough complicated 
with convulsions, spasmodic croup, epileptic seizures, and some other forms of convulsion 
in children ; hysterical convulsions, epilepsy, and various muscular contractions in women. 
The President expressed in warm terms the obligations the Society were under to the 
committee for their able and laborious Report. 
Mr. Curling regretted that so much time had elapsed since the committee had been 
formed. But, as would appear when the paper and the appendix were published, much 
more work had been done than would be thought from the part of the abstract which 
had been read. There had been a division of labour into three chief departments—phy¬ 
siological, surgical, and obstetrical. But the most work had been done by the first sec¬ 
tion—the physiological. This section had had seventy meetings, and had performed 
very many careful experiments. When all this was taken into consideration the Fellows 
would not be surprised that the Report had been delayed. The committee wished to ac¬ 
knowledge the support afforded by many Fellows of the Society and by the profession 
generally. Mr. Curling said that he must allude more pointedly to the labours of the 
reporters, Mr. Sibley and Mr. Callender. These gentlemen had attended all the meetings 
of the committee, and it was, after hearing the Report, scarcely necessary to express any 
opinion as to the great zeal, devotion, and intelligence they had displayed. 
Dr. Kidd said a great debt of gratitude was due to Mr. Curling and the Physiological 
Committee for their incessant labours; yet he could not help thinking the great chloro¬ 
form question at present was, as to its safety or use, a question of practical or empirical 
observation in hospitals, rather than a question of physiology. Nobody denied that very 
large doses killed animals. We had similar experiments in vast number in books, but 
the deaths in practice in the human subject are from idiosyncrasy (from which the lower 
animals are free), from errors of administration, emotion, fright, in the convulsive or pre¬ 
liminary stage before deep anaesthesia at all, deaths from the spasm of the glottis, apncea, 
almost always in trivial operations, like tooth-drawing, rather than in the half-hour’s 
deep narcotism of large operations. Physiological experiments, such as dropping chlo¬ 
roform on the heart of a frog, or throwing it into the peritoneum, are fallacious; the ex¬ 
periment kills, but not the chloroform. Then, as to “ mixtures ” of anaesthetics, they 
have been used extensively in Austria and France, even by order of Government. The 
ether was found to be first inhaled, then the chloroform, and the spirit of wine remains 
behind and has to be squeezed out: they tend towards mystery and are cumbersome. 
The best part of the Report is as to the value of electro-magnetism in resuscitation; but 
it is an error that the little magnet-box is not accessible in hospitals. It is equivalent to 
saying saving life is not important. The midwifery portion of the Report does not offer 
much that is new, and so of the general surgery part; but both are good. But as to the 
use of chloroform in medicine it is deficient, as this agent is most valuable in asthma, pain 
of gall-stones, tetanus, convulsions of children, whooping-cough, and a dozen other affec¬ 
tions. There is at surgical operations now less arterial but more venous blood than for¬ 
merly: even vomiting will fill a wound with blood (secondary). Chloroform is safe in 
what is termed shock or collapse. This is the “ law of tolerance” so well described by 
Miller; but surgeons do not read of empirical rules so much as physiological experiments. 
The speaker fully agreed as to the great value of artificial respiration in accidents, but 
that was best set up by the electro-magnetism box, as now extensively tried. It is true 
also that resuscitation is more difficult in ether accident cases than from chloroform. 
Dr. Hyde Salter said a point had been overlooked, but on w r hich it was not possible for 
