Chloroform: the quest for oblivion
Published 31 August 2003 Sutton Publishing Ltd
See a precis of the chapters with a quote from each
Now in paperback! This book may be ordered from Amazon.co.uk
Also available Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
The original hardcover version may be ordered from Amazon.co.uk
It is also available from Amazon USA and Amazon Canada
It is also available from Amazon USA and Amazon Canada
A history of the discovery, uses and abuses of chloroform from 1831 to the present. Chloroform revolutionised surgery, but also caused hundreds of sudden deaths, the cause of which was a hotly-debated mystery in which physicians took sides and hurled insults at each other in the medical press. Opposition to its use in childbirth was stilled when Queen Victoria used it in her last two confinements. In warfare, there was an initial prejudice against using chloroform, but it soon proved to be invaluable on the battlefield. Chloroform was not just an anaesthetic. Taken internally or as a local application it was used to relieve a wide variety of conditions, from cholera to gonorrhoea, though some of the treatments may have been worse than the complaint. It is not surprising that criminals attempted to use it, often unsuccessfully, or that people made dubious claims to have been chloroformed when robbed under unsavoury circumstances. Women who said they had been sexually assaulted when chloroformed by doctors or dentists were usually branded as hysterical or delusional. Chloroform had a starring role in several sensational trials, and dramatic suicides, while sheer carelessness led to many tragic accidents. In the twentieth century chloroform was gradually superseded by new anaesthetics, but it has an important role in modern medicine, where one of its many uses is to prepare samples for DNA testing.
Some illustrations that didn't make it into the book are below.
Above is the original Junker's inhaler. The operator pumped the hand-bellows, driving air through the chloroform in the revervoir. The second tube carried the mixture of air and chloroform to the patient. This was a very popular apparatus of the late 19th century but it had two drawbacks. The tubes looked very similar and if connected the wrong way the result would be to pump liquid chloroform into the patient. This actually happened on more than one occasion. If the apparatus was tilted a similar thing happened. Below is an ingenious modification by Frederic Hewitt, where one tube is enclosed in the other.
© Linda Stratmann 2003
Linda Stratmann