HOSPITAL ANÆSTHETICS

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16610, 25 August 1919, Page 8

HOSPITAL ANÆSTHETICS

MATTER OP QUALITY.

The matter of the number of deaths under anaesthetics was discussed at la?fc week's meeting of the Auckland Hospital Board:

Mr M. J. Savage called attention to a letter which recently appeared in the Press, suggesting that the number of people dying was due to a poorer quality of chloroform being used. The correspondent in question had, he said, stated •that only the cheaper brsinds of the anrothotic had been procurable during the last three years. Mr Savage asked whether these statements were true in respect of the Auckland Hospital. The medical superintendent, Dr. C. E. Maguire. said that the chloroform in use at the hospital at present was considered to be the best in the world. It was manufactured ,by the same Edinburgh firm which had made it when it was first producod. He considered it to be beyond reproach. Dr. Maguire said that the last death recorded in the Press was not in reality a death under chloroform. _ At the inquest the coroner had laid it down in his finding that chloroform had nothing to do witli the death, yet it was headed in the Press as a "death under an aniesthetic." As a mattor ofi fact, death occurred some twonty minutes after the chloroform had ceased to be administered, Mr M. J. Coyle said the patient was under the aniesthetic when death occurred. The papers did ndt say the anesthetic killed "her. The chairman, Mr W. Wallace, said that Dr. Maguire looked upon the resident medical officers at the hospital as experts in the administration of chloroform. _ The public noed feel no alarm in that respect, therefore. Dr. Maguire said every effort was made to guard against getting inferior chloroform. Mr Coyle: So there is no truth in the statements in the letter quoted by Mr Savage ? Dr. Maguire: No. He added that abont 3*500 patients were annually treated under chloroform at the hospital. The death rate was very small, but, of course, the main thing was to prevent any deaths at all occurring. .