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scarcely perceptible, and cease suddenly thirty-five to forty sec¬ 
onds only after the respiration. This function accelerates, loses 
its amplitude and offers respiratory stops which gradually bring 
on the stopping in expiration. 
3d. This double study gives us documents upon the mechanism 
of the accidents taking place during anaesthesia. 
When death takes place in the beginning of the inhalations, 
it is due to the reflex stopping of the heart and respiration, con¬ 
secutive to the irritation of the nerves of the first respiratory 
passages. Later when anaesthetic is spread into the circulatory 
current, death arrives by stopping of the heart. If anaesthesia 
last long or if the dose of the anaesthetic has been large, there is 
poisoning, and death begins by stopping of respiration ; that of 
the heart following sooner or later. 
All cases of death observed in practice may by close reflection 
be brought back to one or the other of the three mechanisms. 
Then the old precept, watch the heart when you use chloroform, 
and the respiration when you employ ether, is not strictly true at 
all periods of anaesthesia. In the first place, the attention must 
be directed both towards the heart and the respiration, whether 
ether or chloroform is used. In the second place, one must watch 
the heart, and especially if chloroform is used, for it is in that 
period that with this agent one is likely to meet with the sidera- 
tion of the patient. 
In tin 1 , third place, watch the respiration and as the conclusion of 
the intoxicaiton by ether is more sudden than that by chloroform, 
the surgeon will do wisely, unless by special indication, in pre¬ 
ferring chloroform to ether when the operation to perform will 
be, or is likely to be long; he will thus have more time, 
before the stopping of the heart, to overcome the accidents of 
the intoxication .—Gazette Medicate. 
