RELATIONS AND VALUES OF THE ANAESTHETICS. 
263 
doubled but for this, and in fact the tendency to cardiac arrest 
is enhanced. It would be well always to bear in mind the 
universal cosmical law that when there is an addition to good 
and bad of equal proportions of both, the bad is especially 
prone to dominate, and in the ratio of the square of the addi¬ 
tion plus the square of the original. Breeders too frequently 
discover this to'their sorrow. 
During the last decade, a new method of inducing anaes¬ 
thesia has been inculcated, whereby the anaesthetic agent is 
introduced to the general economy through the rectum and 
colon instead of the respiratory passages. It has secured 
some few followers, but only among the ignorant and half ed¬ 
ucated, since it is both irrational and dangerous, and places 
the action of the anaesthetic beyond control; already several 
lives have succumbed to the procedure. The absorption of 
the vapor by the walls of the intestine must necessarily be ir¬ 
regular and uncertain in consideration of the known phenome¬ 
na of local anaesthesia, for if the walls be thoroughly par¬ 
alyzed and relaxed the contained anaesthetic vapor remains 
inactive. On the contrary, if there be no obstruction by faeces 
or by spasmodic contraction, and the vapor passes far up in 
but moderate quantities, and is then insufficient to stimulate 
the parts, absorption may be very rapid. 
In ether and chloroform narcosis that threatens life, when 
all else fails, much may be expected from immediate tracheoto¬ 
my and forced respiration by means of bellows.* Artificial 
respiration after the method of Sylvester—which is by long 
odds the best—often fails to supply the lungs with oxygen in 
sufficient quantity to keep up the action of the heart.f In 
such cases forced expiration will in many, and perhaps the 
majority of instances, prove sufficient, especially in conjunction 
♦See paper by Dr. Geo. E. Fell, in Transactions of the New Jersey State 
Medical Association for 1888 ; also Medical Age for Sept. 25th, ’90. 
t Benj. Howard (Br. Med. Journal, 1888, p. 1155) in a paper read before the 
Medical Society of London, suggested that the cause of death in surgical anaes¬ 
thesia is often due primarily to the valve-like action of the eppiglotis, which, 
falling backward, completely closes the laryngeal aperture, rendering abortive 
all efforts at artificial respiration. 
