234 
G. ARCHIE STOCK WELL. 
during the struggling, with or without holding the breath, 
the patient—often in an upright position and having his arms 
fixed by assistants, which gives the respiratory muscles good 
purchase—gets one or two deep inspirations at the greatest ad¬ 
vantage and obtains the maximum amount of chloroform. 
There is the desire to get under the influence of the drug, the 
voluntary inhalation followed by the still steady conscious 
anxiety to inhale more, and then the involuntary deep inspira¬ 
tion in the natural position in which such inspiration can be 
best taken. 
It will be observed that all these are conditions difficult and 
often impossible to obtain in experiments on animals, and it is 
only under such conditions that cardiac paralysis has been pro¬ 
duced in man. The interval between the stoppage of the heart 
and the respiration is so short, that these points, trivial as they 
may seem, may easily be of importance in modifying the re¬ 
sult. 
Aside from the foregoing there are other serious objections 
to the acceptance of the claims of the Hyderabad Commis¬ 
sion. For one thing, I opine it will require something more 
than mere assertion backed by phosphorous experiments upon 
dogs in whom shock is practically non-existent, to convince 
physiologists and pathologists that the vapor of chloroform 
in the presence of a fatty heart, is as inoccuous as “attar of 
roses.” Even the association of the name of so talented a 
physician as the editor of The Practitioner is not convincing, as * 
in spite of his deserved refutation as an author, he has on 
more than one occasion proven himself most fallible as re¬ 
gards the physiological action of anaesthetics—for instance in 
his assertion that small doses of chloroform* are more apt to 
produce death than large, because “ the reflex contraction of 
the vessels is destroyed whilst the heart is stopped or slowed, 
so that the irritation of a sensory nerve may produce syncope 
by stopping the supply of the blood from the heart'while the 
blood still flows rapidly from the arterial system through the 
capillaries into the veins a statement that, if true, would 
* Brunton’s Materig Medica , Pharmacology and Therapeutics. 
