Lawrie, Chloroform, 1901
Chloroform: A Manual for Students and Practitioners. By Edward Lawrie, M.B. Edin; M.R.C.S. Eng.; Lieutenant-Colonel I.M.S.; Residency Surgeon Hyderabad; Principal of th eHyderabad Medical School and Lecturer on Surgery; Surgeon-Superintendent of the Afzulguni Hospital. London: J. & A. Churchill, 7 Great Marlborough Street. 1901.
Original red cloth over board with black text stamped on the front board. A few faint areas of discoloration and minimal damage at head and tail of spine. Joints and hinges strong. Some pencil notes on front paste down. Front paste down white; rear end papers black; both seem to be original however. Printed on glossy paper, and includes several charts and figures. Clean, bright, and tight throughout. 120 pages. A very good copy.
Edward Lawrie (1846 – 1915) was a student of Syme who wrote many works about chloroform, most famously responding to a challenge published by the editor of the Lancet in 1888 (which K. Bryn Thomas calls “an egotistical campaign” in The Development of Anaesthetic Apparatus). There was much debate about deaths due to chloroform, with some asserting death was due to respiratory failure, and others due to cardiac failure. Per Duncum (The Development of Inhalational Anaesthesia): "Hard upon the physiological researches arising out of this suggestion came the dogmatic criticism of English methods of chloroform anaesthesia made, in 1888, by Edward Lawrie, Residency Surgeon at Hyderabad. Lawrie's assertion that the Scottish disregard for the behaviour of the heart and concentration upon the behaviour of the respiration during chloroform anaesthesia was an infallibly safe procedure, caused a storm which raged with considerable fury for several years. The experiments carried out by the members of the Second Chloroform Commission called together in Hyderabad in 1889, at the Nizam's request, appeared to confirm Lawrie's original contention. Despite the fact that Thomas Lauder Brunton, who had been sent to Hyderabad by the Lancet to represent the English point of view, concurred in the Commission's findings, English anaesthetists were not satisfied and independent researches were undertaken in this country."
