The slowness with which medicine discovered anesthesia was rivaled only by the speed with which the knowledge of this new technology spread throughout the world. Scientists soon began looking for newer, more powerful and yet safer substances, and it was not long before ether had a competitor in chloroform. The two would battle for supremacy throughout the rest of the 1800s.

Chloroform, whose chemical name is tri-chloromethane, was discovered separately and almost simultaneously by American Samuel Guthrie, German Justus von Liebig, and Frenchman Eugène Soubeiran. French chemist Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas named the chemical and described its makeup in 1834. Chloroform's ability to dull pain was well known, and Guthrie used it to relieve pain while setting broken bones. As with ether and nitrous oxide, however, no one had thought of using it to produce complete unconsciousness in...