Chloroform To Treat Asthma
- Time Period: 1850s to 1930s
Chloroform is likely known best by the world as the stuff that helps to knock people out in movies or TV shows. While it does not exactly work like that, chloroform can make people lose consciousness. It can even end lives if a person is exposed to it for too long. In 1910, a book known as Mother’s Remedies: Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies From Mothers of the United States and Canada was published. The extremely long-titled book was written by Dr. Thomas Jefferson Ritter.
In it, he discussed a lot of terrible remedies that we do not use today. One of the most notable was the use of chloroform to treat asthmatic problems. In the 1800s and early 1900s, chloroform was not uncommon for doctors to use. They often used it as an anesthetic among other things, as no one realized its toxic nature yet. Doctors found chloroform to be so good that inhalers were made for asthmatic problems using the stuff. Today, it is mostly banned for medical use in developed countries.