Mr. George Pollock writes to Thursday's Times to recommend the
entire discontinuance of chloroform as an anwsthetic, in favour of ether. Chloroform, he says, lowers the action of the heart, while ether stimulates it. The question of the alternative between the two is often a question between living and dying. Chloroform ap- pears to kill now much oftener than it used to do. And Mr. Pollock even hints that when a patient dies under chloroform, it might not be too strong a course before long for a coroner's jury to bring it in "Manslaughter" against the medical man who administered it, —a very strong course to propose, though it may one day be justified. There is, however, something remarkable in this ten- dency to a weak action of the heart which seems to be at the bottom of the fatality of chloroform, and of a good deal of other feebleness in our modern physique. Has our modern "hurry' begun to wear out our hearts ? Or why this increasing weakness ?
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