A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ANAESTHETICS. 
229 
The experiments with ether show that it is impossible to 
produce anaesthesia with this agent unless some form of inhaler 
is used which thoroughly excludes the air (Paragraph No. 
45). If surgeons choose to be content with a condition of 
semi-anaesthesia, it can, no doubt, be produced with perfect 
safety, though with discomfort to the patient, by ether held 
rather closely to the mouth. Such a condition of anaesthesia 
would never be accepted by any surgeon accustomed to oper¬ 
ate under chloroform. If more perfect anaesthesia is required, 
it can be procured by excluding the air more rigidly, but then 
there is exactly the same danger as in giving chloroform (Para¬ 
graph No. 46). 
Two other statements emanating from Dr. Lawrie are of 
interest in this connection, viz.: “That since the year 1855 in 
Great Britain there has been no death from chloroform re¬ 
corded in which it was proved that the respiration alone was 
attended to throughout the inhalation,’’ and that: “Among 
Scotch surgeons, who are accustomed to regard paralysis of 
respiration as the sole danger in chloroform anaesthesia, deaths 
from chloroform are lacking, or at least extremely rare.* 
The claims of the Commission as just given, evidence that 
its members are ignorant that the cases of cardiac syncope 
from chloroform are those in which semi-asphyxia is pro¬ 
duced and followed by deep inspiration. It was along this 
line the experiments should have been conducted, which was 
done in only four instances. Again, it has always been main¬ 
tained by the upholders of the heart-syncope theory, that such 
cases are of extremely rare occurrence—only once in two or 
three thousand instances—and that it is only by a definite 
combination of circumstances that sufficient chloroform can 
be introduced into the blood. Because the Commission did 
not obtain this combination in less than five hundred experi¬ 
ments—really in only four experiments—they confidently as¬ 
sert such cannot exist. Surely this is not science ! 
It must be remembered also, in spite of the dictum pro¬ 
nounced that the results attained by ansesthesia in lower ani¬ 
mals and in man are precisely the same, that such is value- 
* As I am obliged to quote this from memory, not having the data by me, it 
is possible the wording is not exact, though I can vouch for the correctness of 
the sentiment implied.— Author. 
