Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 309

274

Report of the Ophthalmic Ilospital.

CHLOROFORM.

MAY,

My acknowledgments are due to H. M. Schiefflin, Esq. of New York, for an abundant supply of excellent chloroform, accompanied with the pamphlet of Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh upon this new an- æsthetic agent. A brief allusion to this remarkable agent which the nineteenth century has brought to the relief of the afflicted is all that is here necessary.

The quantity of chloroform I have used with adults is about one drachm, gently inhaled from a spunge surrounded by cloth lined with vil paper to prevent evaporation. In some instances, a second applica- tion has been required.

Previous to receiving this chloroform from New York, I had failed in several instances with a vial obtained elsewhere, to get the patient under its influence. It was given to the lad, No. 28,807, but had he been told that the design was to destroy him, he could not have re- sisted it more violently. He said it was like scalding water. The same complaint had been made by others, but it was probably at- tributable to the quality of the article, no such effect being particularly noticed from that now in use.

Reports of disastrous effects from this agent have produced caution in its use, never administering it when predisposition existed to affec- tions of the lungs, heart, or head. In the eight or ten instances in which I have employed it, no unfavorable consequences have followed. It has not been till recently that I have ventured to call in its aid in lithotomy, and that in the last two cases. In the first of these, before the patient became fully under its influence, there were momentary con- vulsions, but the man retained no recollection of them afterwards, and as already stated the sight of the calculus was his first intima- tion that the ordeal was past. In the second, the patient came speed- ily under its influence, without spasm, cough, or nausea, and awoke from its effects as out of sleep. In cases Nos. 31,465 and 27,931, had a spectator come into the room in the midst of the operation, he would have supposed in the first that the patient was dead, and in the other that she was dying, yet no deleterious effects followed,

RELIGIOUS Services, Distribution of Scriptures and TraCTS. Divine service has been held every Sabbath at the Hospital at half past one P.M. The number of auditors has varied from twenty-five to seventy-five. The excellent Evangelist Liáng Afah continued his assistance up to the month of June last, when his whole time and strength were required by the London Missionary Society, whose de-