Childbirth Often Welcomed Chloroform For An Anesthesia

During the mid-19th century, childbirth was not an event many women were eager to actively experience. Under desperate circumstances, physicians were often called upon to surgically rescue deliveries using brute force—to place metal forceps on the baby's head while still in the birth canal, and to strenuously pull. Even for the steeliest mothers, holding still would have been impossible. By contrast, inhaling chloroform, an early anesthetic, would instantly drop them into a "dreamlike" state, limp and silent, awakening hours later, peacefully and with little memory of what had happened.

Chloroform was widely welcomed, even garnering an endorsement from Queen Victoria herself, who called it "blessed." But the crude method of administering it—inhaling vapors from a rag—led to dangerously uneven dosing. If too little was given, the woman would remain awake and in pain. Yet if too much was given, they could permanently stop breathing. As anesthesia became commonplace, many overdosed and died.



A solution to this problem arrived in the early 20th century. The same effects of inhaled anesthesia could be achieved with a combination of morphine and scopolamine, intravenous medications that could be carefully measured in a syringe. This new form of injectable anesthesia was alluringly marketed to pregnant women as "twilight sleep." And by the 1930s it became the default approach to childbirth in the United States.

Medical Xpress