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 The Chloroform Poisoning Cases.

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THE CHLOROFORM POISONING CASES. ABOUT the middle of the present cen tury a curious medico-legal contro versy arose on the question whether chloro form, which had then been only recently introduced, could be used to facilitate rob bery. Public and professional opinion was pretty evenly divided on the point. 1. The romantic aspects of anaesthesia by chloroform seized upon the public mind. "The early accounts," says a well known writer, " of the use of this agent in surgery and midwifery, which appeared in all the papers, contained a description of its fruity odor, and its administration on a handker chief." Nothing was said of any disagree able property it might possess, or of any unpleasant phenomena attending its admin istration, which would render its use by the criminal classes dangerous and unsatisfac tory. For the purposes of thrilling narrative it was necessary that chloroform should be a criminal agent, and a criminal agent it accordingly became. 2. Moreover, a series of cases — which were supposed to establish the popular theory — was soon forthcoming. A waiter in a California hotel was accused, tried, and condemned to a long term of imprisonment for rape, alleged to have been perpetrated under the following remarkable circum stances. His victim was a servant girl in the same hotel. The alleged criminal, hav ing learned from a druggist that chloroform introduced into a room by means of a spray apparatus would cause insensibility, pro ceeded to act upon this assurance, and suc cessfully carried out his criminal design. The most elementary knowledge of the subject would have sufficed to discredit this extraordinary tale. How was the ignorant operator to know when unconsciousness was effected? Why was the victim to give no sign? How was the potency of the volatile fluid to be preserved? But the temper of

the day was not critical, and the Californian case was raised unchallenged to the dignity of a precedent. Second in order of time came another American case of the al leged application of chloroform in the ser vice of robbery. A watch-dog, shut up in a small room containing a safe, was rendered insensible by towels saturated with chloro form being thrown into the room, and then the safe was robbed. The facts in evidence were the towels, still smelling strongly of chloroform, and the sickness of the dog throughout the following day. Assuming its authenticity, this case no doubt proved that under such conditions as the facts pre sented, the narcotization of a dog was pos sible; that chloroform could, however, be freely used on the human subject in the same way and under the same conditions, by no means followed. But here again the great faith of the laity came to the rescue of the tale, and it received the imprimatur of public approval. The last of the chloro form poisoning cases, to which we shall at the present stage refer, occurred in Kendal, England, in the latter part of 1851. The intended victim was awakened by a man at tempting to suffocate him by a rag steeped in chloroform. In spite of the disadvantage at which he was taken by his midnight as sailant, his cries of" "help," "murder," roused the inmates of the hotel at which he was stopping; and when assistance arrived, the intruder was found the worse anaesthe tized of the two. This story marks a de cided advance on the Californian case, where the waiter was, curiously enough, able to breathe in, and was not overpowered by, the atmosphere which had stupefied his victim, and might, one would have thought, have allayed the popular panic which the chloro form poisoning scare had created. 3. It had, however, directly the opposite effect, and merely provoked from a distin