C— 6. 



Cincinnati, April 24th, 1848. 

 My Dear Sir: — 



In reply to your communication, I may say that I have not 

 time, before the meeting of your Association, to furnish you with a 

 detailed account of the use of ether and chloroform in our hospital; 

 but will briefly give my opinion, formed from my own observation in 

 hospital and private practice. 



It was not without hesitation that I commenced the use of ether, 

 believing that an agent which can so speedily suspend the inter- 

 course between the brain and sentient nerves, must be liable to do 

 mischief. After having tried it, however, in several cases with 

 rather favourable results, I was induced to try it still further, and 

 ultimately employed it in most cases of severe operations. 



In two cases of lithotomy upon adults, the ether did not place the 

 patients fully under its influence, and I think both of them would 

 have done quite as well or better without it. The sensibility was, 

 perhaps, a little diminished at the commencement of the operation, 

 but not through it; and, although I am not confident that a single 

 unpleasant symptom followed, which might fairly be attributed to 

 the ether; yet in one case a pustular eruption, preceded by head- 

 ache appeared on the third day, upon the face and scalp, and 

 subsided in three or four days, without any unfavourable sequel, 

 during convalescence. As the eruption was unlike anything the 

 patient had had before, it was problematical whether it was not, in 

 some degree, due to the ether. 



In two amputations of the thigh the patients had no conscious- 

 ness whatever of pain in any part of the operation, nor indeed of 

 anything passing around them. The blood, which flowed from the 

 large arteries of the stump, was of a dark colour, nearly that of 

 venous blood. Both were young men, enjoying a fair state of health. 

 One operation was undertaken to improve a bad stump from an am- 

 putation performed in Mexico ; the other, to remove a stiff knee and 

 badly flexed leg. The first suffered terrible pain for the first twenty- 



