Medically Correct Writing

Knock-Out, Part 2: Chloroform

You'll often hear this. It's incredibly popular in the crime fiction world. A young woman is walking around alone, at night. Suddenly, she is grabbed from behind and a rag is pulled over her mouth and nose. She slumps into her attacker's arms and is dragged into a van.

So, what's in the rag? Common belief, and many novels, would agree that the rag was drenched in chloroform.

What is chloroform? It was historically used as an anaesthetic, to keep patients asleep during surgical procedures, dental procedures and even births. However, it was quickly noted that chloroform might be dangerous, and several patients died during non-life-threatening procedures, because of the chloroform. Many doctors switched back to using ether, but chloroform was still very popular, especially in Europe, and it became one of the most used anaesthetics in the world until the end of WWI. Each had its perks, but we're not going into that now.

Now, chloroform built up a reputation, mostly thanks to crime fiction authors, as a way to render victims unconscious. However, unlike Rohypnol (which we'll discuss later), chloroform's reputation is unfounded. It's nearly impossible to render someone unconscious using chloroform. Someone actually studied it, and it can take five minutes of breathing through a chloroform-soaked cloth to become unconscious. Not exactly the best solution on a struggling victim, right?

That isn't all, though. After you're unconscious, a constant volume must be administered to keep you asleep, and you have to make sure the tongue doesn't fall back and obstruct the airway, making the victim, or patient, suffocate. If they inhale too much, it can kill the patient, if they inhale too little, they can wake up. It's very, very easy to go over the lethal dose. Usually, the point of these sudden abductions is to keep the victim alive, I believe.

Dosage is the key point here. If you have the perfect dosage, you might be able to get an effect like they have in the films, or close to it. But many people don't realise how bloody difficult it is to get that dosage right. If it was easy, we wouldn't need anaesthesiologists, whose entire job it is to get this right. They're smart people, and even for them it's not always easy. So many factors play into this, including weight (there complicated formulas) and a whole lot we can't even quantify.

The use of chloroform in this way is even so impossible, that back in 1865, a medical journal called The Lancet (one of the most famous medical journals in the world), offered a "permanent scientific reputation" to anyone who could demonstrate immediate unconsciousness using chloroform. I've looked up that statement, to be sure. It's incredibly sarcastic and funny. Needless to say, there has been no such demonstration yet, exactly 150 years later.

On top of that, it has several unpleasant side effects, such as nausea, vomiting and serious headaches. And death.

Then what about the alternative mentioned above, ether? Not the best plan either. It takes about as long as chloroform to work, has the same dosage issues, and is highly combustible at low temperatures. Which means: it has a nasty tendency to blow up. Hard to store. Keep away from sparks.

So, now you know. Chloroform requires several minutes, full cooperation and a good deal of patience to work. Keep that in mind before having your villain put a rag over someone's face.

That was it for today. Now I'm actually starting to wonder if there are any good ways of knocking someone out without harming them, should I ever need to describe it. I should look it up. By now, my search history must look like I'm a serial killer. I swear I'm not.