Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1901-05-23
USING ANESTHETICS
THE FACTS ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF
CHLORoFoRM AND ETHER.

lHE The EFFECTS OF
C~HLOROFoRM AND ETHER.
Evil Deeds Are Not Easy to Do With
h Aid of These Drugs-Some Pop
ular Misinfornation on the Subject
Corrected.
A curious case Of robbery under
chloroform which was decided in Lon
don not long ago was followed with
great interest by writer's on medical
Jurisprudence. Hitherto many such
writer's have expressed great doubt
about these cases. for the process is by
no means SO easy of use as people
think.
Very ~extravagant ideas prevail
among the public as to the power Of
anasthetics, owing perhaps to the Ii
cense employed by novelists when they
describe fancy" cases in their books.
One reads, for instance, of a man
in a railway carriage waving a hand
kerchief before the face of a fellow
traveller and producing instantaneous
unconsciouSness. This is absolutely
impossible. Another imaginative writ
er recently described a murder carried
out by pushing a towel saturated with
a powerful annsthetic under the bed
room door of his sleeping victim. This
also is nonsense.
In another tale the more feasible plan
is carried out of entering the sleeping
mans chamber, pouring the annsthetic
on the bed, the murderer standing by
and watching his victim die. But even
this is stretching the truth rather Sc
verely.
The true facts about chloroform and
its companion anasthetic, ether, are
as follows:
First, with regard to administering
the drug during sleep, doctors have
made very exhaustive experiments, for
it would be of great advantage to a pa
tient on whom an operation has to be
performed to chloroform him while
asleep and save him the horror which
so many people have Of the inhalation,
and they sum up the results, showing
that very rarely can chloroform be adj
ministered to a sleeping person without
awakening him. Grown people are,
with the rarest exception, awakened by
the irritating fumes. If a man were
tired and if his nose were naturally in
sensitive to unpleasant odors, and es-
pecially If he were under the influence
Of drink, it might be possible to make
him unconscious while asleep. But not
even every doctor could do it. The op-
Grafton would require the highest skill,
and the most skillful administrator
would succeed only once in a hundred
times.
If we take the case of splitting the
ch%loroform in a room and thus impreg-
mating all the air of the room, the thing
is out of the question. Yet not only do
novelists assert that this can be done,
but many people have been actually
charged in real life with doing it-for
the purpose of matchmaking them, for
injuring them or perhaps to throw off
suspicion from the pretended victim
who has committed the robbery him
self. If the room measures, say, IL feet
square and is 8 feet high, it would
probably take a gallon of chloroform
spilled on the floor to make a man I'M
conscious. All the chinks and crannies
would have to be stopped up first,
moreover. and the operator himself
would have to be poison proof or he
also would succumb.
AS a matter of fact, the only way to
render a person unconscious by the use
of chloroform is in the way practiced
by surgeons in the operating room. And
this is by no means an easy task. There
are several ways of doing it. The chic
reform may be dropped on a handker-
chief, which is then held over the face
at some little distance. or it may be
dropped on a sponge. or it may be used
in one of the innumerable machines in.
vented for the purpose. But the vapor
must be mixed with air before it is
breathed. That is the reason the hand
kerchief or the sponge is held some
inches from the face. AS q rule il
takes from five to eight minutes to
make the person unconscious. and dur
ing this time he generally struggles
very violently.
1t is probable that many of the
charges of chloroforming which have
been made are false. Sometimes the
pretended victim asserts that he has
become unconscious Immediately. But
it has been shown in evidence that the
time necessary to bring about this re
suit is at least four or five minutes
Sometimes he says he could not cry
out, yet he describes all the circum'
stances of the administration minute
ly. Now. the first effect of the chloro
form is to produce confusion of the
mind, while. on the other hand, the
patient can cry out almost up to the
last. He becomes mentally confused
before he loses the power of speech
These few facts are sufficient perhaps
to demonstrate that some charges OF
possible chloroforming are necessarily
untrue.-London Mail.
Not Quite What She Meant.