Chloroform

When Queen Victoria accepted chloroform during the birth of Prince Leopold in 1853, she single-handedly demolished religious opposition to obstetric anesthesia. Her physician John Snow administered it, and she famously declared it "delightful," making pain relief during childbirth fashionable rather than sinful. This royal seal of approval transformed what Simpson faced as theological heresy into accepted medical practice virtually overnight, proving that sometimes social change needs a monarch's blessing more than scientific evidence.

James Young Simpson discovered chloroform's anesthetic properties in 1847 by literally having dinner parties where he and his colleagues inhaled various chemicals to test their effects. On November 4th, after trying chloroform, Simpson and his friends were found the next morning passed out under the dining table, leading Simpson to declare he'd found something "far stronger and better than ether." This remarkably reckless experimental method—self-experimentation at a dinner party—somehow worked, though it's definitely not in today's research ethics playbook.

Chloroform's ease of use made it not just a medical breakthrough but also a criminal's tool, spawning an entire Victorian panic about "chloroform attacks." Newspapers sensationalized stories of robberies and assaults using chloroform-soaked rags, though modern forensic science reveals most of these accounts were likely exaggerated—chloroform doesn't work as instantly as portrayed in movies. This created a strange dual legacy: a substance that both liberated women from agonizing childbirth pain and simultaneously became pop culture's favorite symbol of sinister predation.

Chloroform (CHCl₃) works by dissolving into the fatty membranes of neurons and disrupting their ability to fire, essentially making your brain cells too "slippery" to communicate properly. Its sweet smell and rapid action made it revolutionary, but doctors didn't understand until decades later that it was also metabolized into phosgene, the same deadly gas used in World War I. This delayed understanding of its hepatotoxicity meant generations of patients were exposed to unnecessary liver and kidney damage before safer alternatives emerged.

Scottish clergymen cited Genesis 3:16—"in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children"—arguing that Simpson's anesthesia defied God's will and that pain in childbirth was divinely mandated punishment for Eve's sin. Simpson brilliantly countered by pointing to Genesis 2:21, where God put Adam into a "deep sleep" before removing his rib to create Eve, arguing that divine anesthesia had Biblical precedent. This rhetorical judo transformed a scientific debate into a hermeneutical one, showing how the same religious text could be weaponized by both sides of a medical innovation.

Despite revolutionizing surgery and childbirth for nearly a century, chloroform was largely abandoned by the 1960s when safer alternatives like halothane emerged. Its narrow margin between effective anesthesia and fatal cardiac arrest—combined with its carcinogenic properties—made it too dangerous once better options existed. Today, chloroform persists mainly in popular culture as a trope and in small quantities as an industrial solvent, a reminder that even revolutionary discoveries can become obsolete footnotes when science marches forward.