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ing teeth produced no shock. The effects of dress were tried on female monkeys ; a plaster
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of-Paris jacket was put on to imitate stays, and a tight bandage round the abdomen to resemble
the band of a petticoat. Under both these disadvantages the animals seemed to die very
quickly indeed. Phosphorus was administered to induce fatty degeneration, and in some the
heart seemed to stop more quickly than in healthy animals, but the effects were not marked.
Their main conclusions were that chloroform and ether acted in the same wa y, both paralysing
the respiratory centre before the heart; if pushed after the respiration had ceased, the heart would
be paralysed. Chloroform was more potent than ether, which latter could not be used in very hot
countries, and the chloroform should be given with plenty of air, for suffocation and chloroform
formed a deadly combination. The deaths from chloroform were due to asphyxia and resulted
from imperfect observation of the respiration. During the prosecution of the research they
had a number of accidental deaths, but all these were due to inattention to the respira
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tory condition. The pulse did not begin to fail till after the respiration, and if the respiration
were not attended to till after the pulse had failed it was probably too late. If attempts were
made to pay attention to both the respiration and the pulse, neither perhaps would be observed
well, and hence it was advisable to keep the attention fixed on the respiration alone. Dr.
Brunton concluded by saying that we owed a great deal to the Nizam, who not only caused the
research to be undertaken. but had generously consented to publish it, so that a complete set of
the photographic tracings would be p r e s e n t e d t o a l l t h e p r i n c i p a l m e d i c a l l i b r a r i e s i n t h e w o r l d .
In the discussion which followed, Mr.Bailey dealt with the clinical side only. In the
early days of chloroform he thought it was administered as well in London as in the north,
but many deaths occurred which were considered to be due to failure of cardiac action. The
plan of administering nitrous oxide before ether did away with its disadvantages, and as
perfect an anæsthesia could be obtained with ether as with chloroform, and the death-rate
from the former was smaller. He found it quite easy to watch not only the respiration, but
also the pulse and the pupil, and the latter, he thought, gave most valuable indications as to
the patient's condition.
Mr.Braine said that in fatal cases under chloroform the patient would be going on
well, then a little mor e chloroform would be given, when a pallor of the cheeks would be
noticed and no pulse would be felt, though the patient breathed on. He thought that one case
so observed in the human being was more valuable than thousands of experiments on animals.
Dr.Sansom agreed that it was most valuable to have these experiments on blood
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pressure reduced to manometric certainty. The question was what were the teachings of
experiments on animals, and how did they bear on the practice of the present day ?
Years ago careful experiments were performed both in England and abroad, which led to the
same conclusions that the Hyderabad Commission had shown more elaborately, namely, that the
heart in animals was an ullimum moriens. But animals varied very much in their reactions
to anæsthetics even in the same species, and he thought that we could not argue direct from
animals to man, whom the influence of emotion placed in an entirely different category. While
there was a fair amount of uniformity in the necropsy records from animals, in man this was
not so,for
in some cases all chambers of the heart were found full of blood, which pointed
strongly to the idea that death took place from paralysis of the heart rather than of the