Note 54 — ON THE INHALATION OF CHLOROFORM, ETC. (continued 2)

Curious arguments are sometimes used in support of the idea of peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. A medical man informed me, one day, that he had seen a patient inhale an ounce of chloroform without any effect. I expressed my opinion that if she had taken the vapour of one drachm into her lungs within four minutes, or the vapour of a little more than half a drachm within two minutes, she would have been insensible; and that the chloroform had mostly evaporated into the room, without entering the patient’s lungs. Then, he said, it would have made all of us insensible. Now to charge the air of a moderate sized room of twenty feet square and ten feet high, uniformly with only a grain and a half of chloroform to each hundred cubic inches, so that, if all the crevices were closed, a person inside might, in course of time, absorb about eighteen minims of the medicine, and be rendered insensible, would require nearly fifteen pounds of chloroform.