3 ms·

Chloroform is toxic to the liver and kidneys and can cause arrhythmias

• devilbunny 2y ago
  And a significant cardiac depressant, even by the standards of general anesthetics (which pretty much all have at least some cardiac depressant effect, even ketamine - you don't typically see drops in blood pressure because it stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, but if someone's been on an amphetamine binge and is out of catecholamines, ketamine will drop their pressure too). In the days before routine pulse oximetry (which, in addition to measuring oxygenation of the blood, is proof of a pulse - it does not work on heart-lung bypass), the fact that the heart was beating was confirmed by using an esophageal or precordial stethoscope. This was typically connected to an earpiece that was molded to the individual user by a simple piece of tubing. Precordial stethoscopes are a neat thing to see; they are just the "bell" part of a stethoscope made out of a decent-sized piece of metal so that the weight would keep it on the patient's chest and prevent it from moving around. I'm told that anesthesiologists who practiced in this era, which was also before each anesthesia monitor had continuous gas sampling of the patient's respirations to determine the concentration of anesthetic agents, could recognize when a patient under halothane (which was also a well-known cardiac depressant, but unlike many other agents had a non-irritating smell and so could be used for pediatric cases without an existing IV, where anesthesia is induced by simply breathing the gas) was getting too deep by the change of the heart sounds. We have a newer, less cardiac-affecting anesthetic now, sevoflurane, which has essentially replaced halothane in developed countries and I would assume most less-developed ones as well (because it's now off-patent and pretty cheap).