A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ANESTHETICS. 
227 
cian should have been selected instead of a surgeon* or pro¬ 
fessional anaesthetist, is beyond comprehension. 
The reports of both Commissions are admitedly and con¬ 
fessedly partizan, and though the statement is made that the 
object was experiments “to demonstrate the effect upon blood 
pressure, heart and respiration of the inhalation ol chloro¬ 
form, ether and the-A. C. E. mixture,” a second announce¬ 
ment declares the purpose to have been “ testing the suit¬ 
ability and safety of chloroform as an anaesthetic.” 
The reports alike bear the impress of Dr. Lawrie’s pen, 
and the first displays an animus against the feeling and 
watching the pulse in chloroform administration that is by no 
means concealed in the second, and the latter boldly asserts as 
facts the following :f 
Chloroform when given continuously by any means which 
ensures its free dilution with air, causes a gradual fall of the 
mean blood-pressure, providing the animal’s respiration is not 
impeded.in any way. * * * If the chloroform is less di¬ 
luted the fall is more rapid, but is always gradual so long as 
the other conditions are maintained ; and however concen¬ 
trated the chloroform may be, it never causes sudden death 
from stoppage of the heart (Paragraph No. i). * * * The 
theory which has hitherto been accepted is that danger in 
chloroform administration consists in the stoppage or slowing 
of the heart by vagus inhibition. This is now shown to be 
absolutely incorrect (Paragraph No. 18).* * * Granting, 
then, the truth of Ringer’s conclusions from experiments up¬ 
on the frog’s heart (which have not been repeated and con¬ 
firmed by the Commission) that chloroform has a gradual 
paralyzing effect upon the heart tissue, we must conclude that 
such an effect, in the degree in which alone it could occur in 
the practical inhalation of chloroform, would rather be a 
source of safety than of danger (Paragraph No. 19). 
* In * * * the case of a dog that had had morphine, 
remarkable slowing and even temporary cessation of the 
heart’s action occurred again and again at the same moment 
respiration stopped, but the heart invariably recovered itself. 
* * * The failure of the heart, if such it can be called, 
* The distinction between the physician and the surgeon is sharply drawn in 
Great Britain, both in study and practice. 
+ Vide, The Lancet , London, January 18th, 1890. 
