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

by Linda Stratmann (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Sutton Publishing Ltd; illustrated edition edition (31 Aug 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0750930985
  • ISBN-13: 978-0750930987
  • Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 16.2 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 214,167 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  • See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

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. Tracing the social, medical and criminal history of chloroform, this book looks at early medical practices to create oblivion through the discovery of chloroform and 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.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Science, surgery, crime and chloroform., 7 Nov 2003
How do you test a new substance to see if it has a medical use? Nowadays we’d try it on mice first, but the scientists of the past tried out all the drugs themselves. They tested them on their partners, their children, their friends and relatives, before trying them on patients. This was the age of chloroform parties and nitrous oxide parties, where staid middle class Victorians inhaled substances with the enthusiasm of modern day solvent sniffers.
Before anaesthetics were invented, surgery was brutal. Speed was crucial and patients were held down or strapped down to prevent them struggling during operations. The discovery of ether and chloroform changed that, though surgeons were very resistant to the idea of removing excruciating pain from surgery because they though it was beneficial to the patient.
Of course, a substance that could be administered via a handkerchief, that produced unconsciousness, had criminal applications too. Chloroform was one of the substances used by the Chicago mass murderer, Henry Howard Holmes to kill his victims.
There’s a fascinating account of the 1886 case against Adelaide Bartlett who was accused of murdering her husband with chloroform. She had persuaded her lover, a Methodist minister, to obtain the chloroform so that she could prevent her husband’s unwelcome sexual attentions! The Prosecution couldn’t demonstrate how she actually carried out the murder and Adelaide was found ‘not guilty’ to general applause in the courtroom!
The author has done some original research into this case and not only suggests the probable ‘modus operandi’, but also produces information about Adelaide that might have changed the Jury’s mind if it had been presented.

A cracking good read for anyone interested in crime and medicine in Victorian society with the bonus that the book is a well researched, detailed, clearly written and thoroughly entertaining account of the rise and fall of chloroform.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion., 26 Dec 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

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, 5 Dec 2003
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.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Not a book to send you to sleep.
I apologise for the obvious joke in the review title, but it needs saying that this medical history is not a cure for the insomniac. Read more
Published on 20 Oct 2003 by queen_ynci

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