Chloroform anaesthesia
Anestesia con cloroformo
- Date
- 1847 · confidence high
- Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- James Young Simpson
- People
- 👤 James Young Simpson1811–1870
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
The introduction of chloroform, more potent and pleasant than ether, especially in obstetrics. Queen Victoria used it during her 1853 confinement, giving it social legitimacy.
Simpson and his assistants tested it on themselves in his dining room in Queen Street, Edinburgh, on 4 November 1847.
What it led to
- Obstetric anaesthesia and religious debate over the pain of childbirth
- Battlefield anaesthesia (Crimea, the American Civil War)
- John Snow's scientific study of dosage
- Chloroform deaths and early pharmacovigilance
Built on
- Ether surgical anaesthesia1846
- Ether anaesthesia
- Synthesis of chloroform (Soubeiran, Liebig, Guthrie, 1831)
Made possible
- Antiseptic surgery (Lister)1867
- Anaesthetic machine1902-1907
- Metered-dose inhalers
- Modern obstetric anaesthesia