Chloroform is more pleasant to inhale, and is less irritant to the air-passages than ether. The vapor of chloroform is not, and the vapor of ether is, inflammable, whence it follows that the former may be alone admissible at night under some circumstances. The stage of excitement is longer from ether than from chloroform, but, as ether may be given much more rapidly, this difference in action may be made to disappear in practice. Chloroform is more prompt in its effects, and the narcosis induced by it more sustained, than is the case with ether; but these advantages possessed by chloroform are quite balanced by the greater freedom with which ether may be administered. The danger from the inhalation of chloroform is vastly greater than from ether.

It follows from the above considerations that ether should be used in preference to chloroform in all cases, except during labor. Chloroform is to be preferred in labor, because more pleasant to inhale, more prompt in action, and without inflammability. The consideration of safety must necessarily take precedence, but experience has shown that chloroform is perfectly safe in labor when properly administered.

The frequency with which fatal cases of chloroform narcosis have been reported—amounting in the aggregate now to about five hundred—imposes an immense responsibility on the administrator. In the present state of opinion on the subject, the use of chloroform, when ether is available, for the production of anaesthesia, can hardly be justified, especially if a fatal result follow its administration.