It is difficult to see how its use could favour secondary haemorrhage after operation, as some said it did; but it is, on the contrary, easy to understand how the opposite result might follow. That purulent absorption should prevail among men so broken in health as our men were, need not be explained by the employment of chloroform; and that ice would prove more useful in the slighter operative cases in field practice, few will be disposed to admit, either on the ground of time, efficiency, or opportunity. To Deputy Inspector-General Taylor we owe the practical observation, that chloroform appears to act more efficiently when administered in the open air. In the prolonged searches which are sometimes necessary for the extraction of foreign bodies, chloroform is useful, not only in preventing pain, but also in restraining nj:.M tlif introduction of the body.
Then much is gained in field practice by the mere avoidance of the patient's screams when undergoing operation, as it fn piently happens that but a thin partition, a blanket or W planks, intervene between him who is being operated upon, and those who wait to undergo a like trial. Thus when, as after a general engagement, a vast number of men come in quick succession to be subjected to operation, it is a point of great importance to save them from the depression and dread which the screams and f their comrades necessarily produce in them. It is therefore my clear conviction, that the experie of the late war, as regards chloroform, is unequivocally irable; that it has shown that chloroform, bth tly and indirectly, saves life; that it abates avast nit of that its use is as plainly indicated un-shot as in other wounds; and that, if adminis; with nw,how10 mile' its being well known imt t-> be of so frequent occm a the field, and the u: of arresting i r underst-""!.
Pdandin. in his commuii' the A.C ihat hitiiin of Lrun-.-h'.t 1 him to that j.ri:' takes plae.if a vessel o: is injured, but that it is soon spontaneously arrested by an an ion similar to that which takes place when a limb is torn off. Sanson repeats the remark as to the constant presence of haemorrhage to some extent at the moment of injury. Guthrie did good service to surgery by showing how small a force can obstruct a vessel of the first order. He thereby gave courage and confidence to both surgeon and patient. It has been the experience of most wars, certainly of the late one, that tourniquets are of little use on the battle-field; for though it is unquestionable that a large number of the dead sink from haemorrhage, still, it would be impossible, amidst the turmoil and danger of tin fight, to rescue them in time, the nature of the wounds in most of these cases causing death very A great artery is shot through, and in a moment the heart has emptied itself by the wound.
It would be an experiment of some danger, but of much interest, as bearing on this question, to examine the bodies of the slain immediately after a battle, and carefully record the apparent cause of death in each case, t I before remarked how curiously arteries escape injury from a ball passing through a limb. In the course * Although this is true as a general rule, yet both Lairey and Colles relate instances in which, by prompt assistance, death was prevented in wounds opening the carotid artery. f The only mention I have been able to meet with in the records of the medical department of the causes of death on the field, is in a report from the surgeon of the 41st, when serving in Cabul. lie mentions, that of four men who were killed outright, three were wounded through the chest, and one through the head.