Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

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Product Description

Right up until the 19th century, physicians and philosophers regarded sleep as a state of near-oblivion in which there was no mental activity, a kind of halfway stage between wakefulness and death. For the Victorians, therefore, when anaesthesia was first practised, it was commonly seen as traumatic—for doctors were being asked to induce a condition looked upon as partial death. Viewed with suspicion, many feared that they would never wake again, or that they would lose their faculties on a permanent basis, even become insane. Yet, especially after Queen Victoria allowed its administration to her during childbirth, its use to block out pain became widespread. This engaging and entertaining book traces the social, medical and criminal history of chloroform, from early medical practices to create oblivion through the discovery of chloroform and its discovery, its use and misuse in the 19th century, to the present. Today chloroform is no longer used as an anaesthetic, but has a multitude of uses in industry and medical research, including a role in DNA profiling. A by-product of the chlorination of water, we inhale infinitesimal amounts of chloroform every time we have a shower.

About the Author

Linda Stratmann was born in 1948. When she was 16 she took a part-time job in Boots the Chemist and well remembers selling and dispensing Collis Browne's Chlorodyne. She currently works as a tax inspector. She also edits on a freelance basis. She has had a long-term interest in true crime and has done extensive research in this field. This is her first book.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: The History Press; illustrated edition edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750930985
• ISBN-13: 978-0750930987
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,679,756 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, December 5, 2003

By	Elizabeth Brown (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

Meticulously researched and skilfully written, this book is a fascinating history of the use of chloroform, both medically and in less laudable pursuits. Fascinating characters crowd the pages--Samuel Guthrie, who managed to survive his own explosive experiments and become the discoverer of the controversial substance; Adelaide Bartlett, whose acquittal on the charge of murdering her husband with chloroform prompted a judge's hope that she would now "tell us how she did it"; W.T. Stead, the crusading journalist who used chloroform in his attempt to expose the Victorian trade in young girls; Dr. John Snow, whose administration of chloroform to Queen Victoria prompted that supposedly staid lady to pronounce the effect "delightful beyond measure"; and, H.H. Holmes, who holds the dubious distinction as "America's first serial killer". The clarity of Ms. Stratmann's writing, and her touches of dry wit, ensure a painless journey through what could have been a soporific topic in less-deft hands. Students of Victorian crime will be especially interested in her new research and insights into the Bartlett case. I highly recommend this book and hope that we will see more from this writer.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Second Great Anesthetic, November 19, 2003

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

According to Linda Stratmann, "Descriptions and illustrations of surgery in the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries are mainly a catalogue of unrelieved agonies." It is hard to disagree with this assessment. Patients were restrained on the operating table by strong orderlies and leather straps and given a cloth to bite on to help keep them quiet. Surgeons may have been skillful; they used the sharpest of knives to cut off limbs, for instance, with astonishing speed. They could not control pain except by getting it over with as quickly as possible. When the anesthetic properties of ether were discovered, it was a great boon to humanity. But Stratmann's book, _Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion_ (Sutton) details the history of the second great anesthetic. It is a dramatic rise and fall story, told with detail and a sense of broader social history.

Ether worked wonderfully well, but it had disadvantages, especially its explosiveness. James Young Simpson, an obstetrician in Edinburgh, discovered the effects of chloroform. There were no experimental standards in place, and Simpson's procedure sounds simple and dangerous: he would get samples of any substance with a "breatheable vapour, inhale them from a tumbler, and make notes of his reactions." He enlisted friends as guinea pigs as well. Four days after being knocked out by chloroform in 1847, he used it successfully on an obstetric case. Though there is a legend that ministers denounced chloroform because taking pain away from childbirth was irreligious, Stratmann has not found documentation that this is so, although Simpson did get private letters along those lines.

Despite the frivolous objections, chloroform did have its bad effects on some patients as all medicines do. There was a long and emotional argument over whether it affected the heart or the respiration after doctors finally realized that some people were dying from it. Chloroform continued to be used until newer, safer agents began to be used in the 1950s. This surprising book shows that it was not just used for anesthesia, but also for general sedation, to combat seasickness, and even as fuel for steamer boats. In addition, it was used for criminal activities like murder and robbery, but it was not very successful for these (or for many of the other proposed uses), even though they did make good lurid stories for the Victorian press. The wide range of _Chloroform_ makes it an amusing history not only of an important aspect of medical science but of the society of the time.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion, December 26, 2003

By	Jeff Defalque (Birmingham, Alabama United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This compact book is a spellbinding history of chloroform, from its discovery in 1831-2 to its present role in our industrial plants and our environment. It is, to my knowledge, the first and only historical survey of the famous anesthetic. The author has researched a prodigious number of sources, many of them little known. The book is written for laymen but physicians, especially anesthesiologists, will enjoy reading it and learn much from it.

The author clearly presents the controversies which surrounded chloroform from its birth on: who was its first discoverer; the debate between Boston & Edinburgh over its safety, as compared to that of ether; the medical and religious oppositions to its use in obstetrics (or even in surgery); the quarrel between the Scottish and English surgeons on its safe mode of administration; and the disputes over the mechanism of the instantaneous death that it not infrequently caused. All sides of the debates are fairly presented and soundly judged on the basis of facts gleaned in a vast literature.

The scientific and medical material is presented clearly and soberly, in a crisp, vivid, and lucid style. The author presents a fair judgment of a drug, which spared patients the horrors of the bite of the knife but could also kill with the speed of a thunderbolt.

The book also offers vivid biographic vignettes of the great pioneers of chloroform. Some of them, little known, such as Samuel Guthrie and Edward Lawrie beautifully come alive in the book.

Over the years chloroform was recommended for every physical and mental disease and the book includes many amusing stories about those medical fads. From its birth to our present days, chloroform was also used for wrongdoing & Mrs. Stratmann narrates at great length some famous criminal cases involving chloroform, which will delight every crime buff. No mystery writer could have presented with more verve and sense of suspense the stories of Adelaide Bartlett, W. Markand, Sir William Osler, WT Stead, HW Mudgett, and "Old Man" WM Rice.

Chloroform raised much clinical and scientific interest on the Continent, especially in Germany, though less so than in the UK. I hope that the author will delve more extensively with the story of chloroform in Continental Europe in her book's 2nd edition.

This work is a serious book on a difficult medical subject but its fluent, crisp and vivid style makes it a delight to read. I immensely enjoyed reading it and am sure that laymen & physicians who read it will share my pleasure. I highly recommend it to both.

Ray J. Defalque,MD,MS
Prof. (Ret.) UAB School of Medicine