At the examination of the body, the right cavities of the heart were found gorged with blood. The walls of the right ventricle were thinner than natural, and affected to a certain extent with fatty degeneration.[118] A paragraph was inserted in some of the Edinburgh newspapers, and forwarded by Dr. Roberts to the _Lancet_,[119] in which it was implied that death in this case was not caused by the chloroform. It is, however, like the preceding case, a well marked instance of the sudden and fatal action of this agent. _Case 47._ A sailor, aged thirty, died whilst inhaling chloroform in St. Thomas’ Hospital, in October 1856, preparatory to having some necrosed bone removed from one of his fingers. “He did not appear to be in robust health; still there was no obvious reason against his having the chloroform, which was accordingly administered as follows. One drachm was poured on a sponge folded between two thicknesses of lint, and this held at a little distance from his mouth, while he was sitting in a chair. He appeared to be going off very comfortably, when the chloroform was left off for from half a minute to a minute, and then resumed. He now began to raise his hands and tremble, and kept spitting in the lint, and appeared as if about to vomit. Suddenly he was violently convulsed through his whole frame, as if in an epileptic fit. The chloroform was at once discontinued, and he was laid in a semi-horizontal posture. The convulsion only lasted for a few seconds, and when it had ceased he began to breathe with effort and puffing of the lips, and almost immediately to gasp irregularly. His pulse was almost imperceptible and intermittent. Artificial respiration was at once performed by alternate compression and relaxation of the walls of the chest, the tongue being held out of the mouth by the forceps. Ammonia was applied to the nostrils, and cold water dashed in the face, and in about a minute he rallied so as to breathe without assistance, but in a few seconds he relapsed, and could not be recovered. “At the post-mortem examination there was found to be fatty degeneration of the heart, liver, and spleen, and the membranes of the brain were thickened. The lining of the ventricles presented a peculiar pitted appearance, apparently from inflammatory deposit. The brain itself was pale.”[120] “It was ascertained after the man’s death that he had been of intemperate habits, and had had an attack of delirium tremens three weeks previously. In the report of this case in the _Association Medical Journal_, the following is the account of the appearances met with after death. In the autopsy in the present case, which we observed with particular care, the brain was in a state of œdema and bloodlessness, very like the brain in a patient who died from chloroform in the Ophthalmic Hospital. The liver was fatty; but the heart seemed the very model or type of the healthiest kind of heart. All the other organs were also healthy.”[121]