“What a blessing she has chloroform,” Queen Victoria (1819–1901) is rumored to have said in 1859, when her oldest daughter gave birth with the help of the popular anesthetic; the Queen herself had used chloroform, years earlier. But while chloroform saved many patients a great deal of pain over the years, it also caused much death and suffering during its controversial history.

Chloroform was first prepared in 1831 by the American chemist Samuel Guthrie (1782–1848), who was attempting to create an inexpensive pesticide by mixing whiskey with chlorinated lime. The mysterious chemical—estimated to be 40 times sweeter than table sugar—became known as Guthrie’s sweet whiskey. In 1847, the Scottish physician Sir James Young Simpson (1811–1870) began using a chloroform solution to induce unconsciousness before surgery. Chloroform was nonflammable and put people to sleep relatively quickly, both advantages that allowed it to replace ether as the most commonly used anesthetic.

Doctors noted that the effects of chloroform were divided into five stages, depending on the dose or the length of time spent inhaling it:

  1. The patient became insensible but retained consciousness.
  2. The patient entered a lethargic state in which some pain could be felt.
  3. The patient was physically incapable and could feel no pain.
  4. The patient exhibited stertorous breathing and complete muscle relaxation.
  5. The patient suffered an often fatal paralysis of the chest muscles.

Stage 3 was recommended for most surgical procedures—but the amount of chloroform required to send a patient from stage 3 to stage 5 was very small. Fatalities soon began to occur, along with liver damage and other permanent health problems from “delayed chloroform poisoning.” In 1911, Alfred Goodman Levy (1866–1954) proved in animal experiments that chloroform caused cardiac fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm. But even with its dangers, chloroform became a popular form of anesthesia in Europe and, with lesser enthusiasm, in America. Between 1865 and 1920, chloroform was used in 80 to 95 percent of all anesthesia procedures performed in English- and German-speaking European countries, even though it greatly increased the mortality rate. With the introduction of safer and easier gas anesthesia, which used agents such as nitrous oxide, the use of chloroform declined in the 1930s.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

  1. Today, chloroform is regarded as a possible cause of cancer.
  2. Chlorinated tap water often contains small traces of chloroform.
  3. Women in the late 1800s used chloroform for labor, although physicians heavily debated the safety of this practice. Childbirth was a natural phenomenon, they reasoned, and many assumed that pain was a necessary part of the process.