Ah, the good old days, when pain was good for you and the only requirements for surgery were a sharp knife and two big lads to hold you down. But then some troublesome doctors began to complain that patients just would not hold still while they were cutting them open. Blatant incompetence! There's nothing like battlefield amputation without anaesthesia to put some hair on a soldier's chest.

In Chloroform, The Quest for Oblivion, Linda Stratmann tells the murky and quirky history of a substance used as an anaesthetic by doctors, a party trick for Victorians and a drug in a number of sensational crimes. Before the advent of chloroform and ether, early soporifics probably included alcohol and opium, and there is evidence that the Greeks and Romans used opium as painkillers before operations. Mandragora and cannabis were also known and used right through the Middle Ages. But then a strange thing happened on the way to the operating theatre. "While there were no real advances in pain relief up to the mid-nineteenth century, one might imagine that the old tried and tested herbal soporifics would continue to be employed in the absence of something better. The evidence...tells a different and remarkable tale. Surgery after the Middle Ages was a terrifying and bloody agony, and the early methods of pain relief were largely abandoned", Stratmann writes. No-one is sure why this knowledge was lost. Without anaesthesia, a surgeon's only option was to work as quickly as possible. Indeed, a surgeon's skill was measured by how quickly he worked. Unfortunately this meant only simple and quick procedures could be attempted and if the surgeon encountered a problem, there was no time to consult a colleague.

Although chloroform had been manufactured since the 1830's, at first no-one realised it had anaesthetic properties. Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) had become quite popular for the extraction of teeth, but it was considered unsuitable for operations, as it didn't put the patient into a deep enough sleep. Ether's anaesthetic properties were known and it was used for surgery, but it can irritate the throat, so patients tended not to inhale the gas deeply enough or long enough to produce insensibility. And unless you were a fire-eater, the flammability of ether in the age of gas lamps was a serious drawback.

Chloroform proved to be an instant hit. It was easy to make, easy to use, it had a sweet, pleasant odour and - best of all - you could play with matches around it. The first recorded medical use of chloroform as an anaesthetic was not until November 8, 1847 in an obstetric case. Sir James Young Simpson, professor of midwifery in Edinburgh, administered it. Simpson was a remarkable man, who used the considerable force of his personality to expound the wonders of chloroform as an anaesthetic and did much to establish its reputation. Stories such as that of the 12 year old Liverpudlian girl who simply remarked "Oh! Is it off?" after her leg was amputated, saw to it that "within a year of its introduction, chloroform was a worldwide phenomenon, and the anaesthetic of choice everywhere save the North-eastern United States". It was even famously administered to Queen Victoria during labour.

Reports then started to surface that sweet oblivion was turning into a rather more permanent state for some patients. Chloroform was proving fatal on a worryingly regular basis. This contradiction, that chloroform was apparently killing young and healthy patients under light anaesthesia, proved to be its ultimate downfall.

Chloroform does what it says on the cover - it is certainly an exhaustive history of "the quest for oblivion". Unfortunately it is also rather exhausting. The more historical chapters read just a little bit too much like the traditional "history of" first chapter in text books. This makes what is a very informative book slightly less lively than it could be. The major drawback of an otherwise good book is that Stratmann dives headlong into a blow-by-blow account of every development, argument, contradictory experimental result and sniping letter written to The Lancet, with no attempt to explain the scientific workings of the chemical until the second to last page. While this is probably a device to stir the reader's curiosity, it backfires. Instead of a sense of dramatic irony at the outdated medical practices, the reader is left feeling every bit as in the dark as the Victorian doctors. The research is impeccable, yet the book is stuffed so full of facts, figures, personality clashes and controversies, that you are left with the vague feeling that you should be studying the contents for a test. Stratmann only allows herself a more relaxed and easygoing style when dealing with the sordid details of Victorian crimes - many of which were alleged to have involved chloroform. As it stands, the book would probably interest a professional in the field of anaesthesia much more than the general public, which is rather a shame, as Chloroform contains many little gems of historical fact that should be allowed to shine.