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stinctive fear of an agent which produced such peculiar and appa- 

 rently alarming effects, which possessed the minds of the profession, 

 and which prevented many prudent practitioners from pushing the 

 practice to a point at which its full effects were attained. This cau- 

 tion gave rise to many apparent failures, and discouraged experi- 

 menters from further trials. 



The favourable reports which were continually received from our 

 brethren in Boston and its vicinity, and from the other side of the 

 Atlantic, were, however, not without their effect; and within the past 

 year, the inhalation of ether has been extensively used throughout 

 the United States. It is resorted to in most of the large hospitals 

 of the country, and at the public clinical dispensaries of the schools, 

 as a preparatory measure before all important operations, as well as 

 in the private practice of many physicians and surgeons. The 

 medical press of the country, although not unanimous in its favour, 

 (so far at least as its general application is concerned,) teems with 

 cases and results in which ether has been safely employed, under a 

 great variety of circumstances. 



In the latter part of the past }*car a new and more powerful anes- 

 thetic agent was announced under the name of chloroform, an article 

 which is but another variety of ether. This substance, though pre- 

 viously known both in this country and in France, was first used for 

 the purpose of annulling pain in the human subject, by J. Y. Simpson, 

 M. D., the eminent Professor of Midwifery in the University College 

 of Edinburgh, and the first accoucheur who ventured to employ ether 

 as a means of destroying the pains of parturition. 



Professor Simpson's paper on the " Super-induction of anaes- 

 thesia in natural and morbid parturition; with cases illustrative of 

 the use and effects of chloroform in obstetric practice," was read 

 before the Mcdico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, on the 1st of 

 December, 1847, and reached this country in the early part of this 

 year. It created a strong impression favourable to the new agent 

 proposed by Dr. Simpson, and induced many practitioners at once 

 to adopt it aa a substitute for ether. The advantages claimed for 

 chloroform over ether by its advocates, are its more rapid and in- 

 tense action; without the vascular, muscular and intellectual excite- 

 ment, which usually precedes the full impression of ether. The 

 several stages of etherization are blended, as it were into one, the 

 full impression of chloroform being induced in from 30 to 40 seconds, 

 while an average period of four minutes may be considered as nee - 

 sary to produce a like effect from ether. The quantity required is 



