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Sir Joseph Fayrer's letter therefore merely confirms my opinion that the report of the Glasgow
Committee, which was published in 1879, and was founded upon insufficient experiments, has
done infinite harm, and is chiefly responsible for the fatality from chloroform during the last
ten years. Dr. James Dunlop also states:* "Within the last ten years the deaths under
chloroform in Glasgow have been more numerous than they had been in the previous decade."
Professor Wood next proceeds to re-examine the clinical facts. "If any credence is
to be attached to the statements of competent witnesses who have recorded human deaths
during anæsthesia, it is certain that in some cases under the influence of chloroform the pulse
and the respiration have ceased simultaneously, whilst in other instances the respiration has
failed before the pulse, and in still other cases the pulse has ceased its beat before the respira
-tory movements were arrested." Nothing is more certain, however, than that it is unsafe to
attach credence to those whom Professor Wood styles the competent witnesses who have
recorded human deaths during anæsthesia. The reports of chloroform deaths are utterly
worthless and unreliable, because there is no independent person present who can take notes,
and who will not interfere, although he sees the inevitable death approaching. Professor Wood
then compares his clinical facts, which you now see are of no value, with the results of
observations made on animals. He states that he and his colleagues definitely proved that
in "the dog chloroform has a distinct, direct paralysing influence on both respiration and
circulation: that the respiration may cease before the heart beat, or the two functions be
simultaneously abolished; but that in some cases the heart is arrested before respiration. We
have several times seen the respiration continue as long as one and even two minutes after
the blood-pressure has fallen to zero, and the pulse has completely disappeared from the
carotid artery."
Professor Wood here, makes the same mistake as was made by Dr. Lauder Brunton
on the very last day of the Hyderabad Commission's experiments. No one who was present
will forget the exciting scene when Dr. Brunton, who was watching the Fick manometer,
called out that the heart had stopped, though the dog was still breathing. The excitement
reached a climax when a needle thrust into the heart showed that it was beating vigorously;
and we restored the animal easily. On another occasion everybody in the room thought
a dog was dead when it was not. The fact that there is no carotid pulse is no proof that the
heart has stopped. Professor Wood continues: "The correctness of our experiments we claim
must be acknowledged. I do not desire to express any doubt whatever as to the correct
-ness of the experimental data of Dr. Brunton. [Why not of the Hyderabad Commission?]
I simply claim that both sets of experiments, although they have yielded different results,
have been correctly and properly performed." The results being irreconcilable, either
the experimental data of Professors Wood and Hare or those of the Hyderabad Commission
must be incorrect. The question we have to decide is which of the two are wrong.
Professor Wood asserts that his experimental data correspond with his clinical facts. But his
clinical facts prove nothing whatever, except that, if part of the chloroformist's attention is
devoted to the pulse in chloroform administration, deaths occur. Professor Wood's experi
-mental data, like his clinical facts, do not prove that chloroform directly affects the heart.
* Vide THE LANCET of Sept. 27th, 1890.