Chloroform

A clear volatile liquid with a strong smell like ether, chloroform was once administered by inhalation to produce anesthesia and given as an analgesic (to relieve pain) and a remedy for cough.

It is quite toxic to the kidney and the liver.

Sir James Young Simpson, a prominent obstetrician and a professor of medicine and midwifery in Edinburgh (Scotland), introduced chloroform as an anesthetic agent for childbirth in 1847. Chloroform came to be widely used for other procedures but its dangerous side effects have relegated it to the annals of medical history.