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

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.

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