Chloroform

Teacher recommended

?
  • Created by: GraceLong
  • Created on: 07-03-16 17:15

Chloroform

Advantages

  • Patients wouldn't have to experience the pain of surgery
  • It was a big break through for surgery which would lead to other discoveries that improved surgery
  • Surgeons could perform more complex operations on patients to discover more about the human body
  • Fewer patients died of shock
  • There was more research into chloroform and how it could improve
  • Better anesthetics could be discovered that relaxed muscles and put patients to sleep
  • Local anesthetics could be developed

Disadvantages

  • Surgeons could not pride themselves on their quick surgical skills to reduce pain
  • Chloroform hadn't been tested and no one knew if there were long term side-effects
  • Some patients died because they had been given too much chloroform e.g. Hannah Greener
  • Surgeons performed more complex operations in the body causing more infection and more death
  • People believe pain was a gift from God and anesthetics were unnatural
  • Chloroform made patients vomit
  • More blood loss was caused which lead to more deaths

Evaluation

Overall the discovery of chloroform was a big break through in surgery because patients could now enjoy a pain free surgery without the risk of death due to shock. After the discovery of chloroform, local anaethetics could also be developed and chloroform could be improved by other surgeons and scientists. However, there was a lot of opposition towards the use of chloroform including the side effects not yet being discovered and people believed pain was a gift from God and it shouldn't be messed with. Additionally, once patients were asleep surgeons attempted more complex operations which risked the patients life and increased the risk of infection further inside the patients body. Therefore I believe despite chloroform being a huge break through, it still had many disadvantages which lead to more deaths than before the use of anaethetics.

Comments

RachelTaylor221B

Report

Thank you so much, hopefully this recourse helps me with my assessment.

Similar History resources:

See all History resources »See all Medicine through time (OCR History A) resources »