172 [Assembly 



It must be kept iu view that air must be freely admitted in 

 administering all amei-thetic agents, then there is little if any 

 dauger to be feared. In consequence of this accident in Berlin, 

 etherization was for a time in bad odour, but so soon as I learn- 

 ed the facts I wrote a letter which was translated into German, 

 and published in Berlin, and set all right again by show- 

 ing the way to avoid such accidents. If after the administration 

 of ether or a mixture of chloroform and ether to man, we find 

 the pulse reduced about 10 beats a minute only, and that it is 

 gradually rising and the respiration gees on easily, we may feel 

 no apprehension even if the person should remain unconscious 

 for an hour or more. But since this long sleep is not necessary, 

 excepting in cases of violent insanity, when it is often beneficial, 

 we generally recover our patients by suddenly applying a cloth 

 wet with ice coldvmter to the face, forehead and head. This gene- 

 Tally brings them quickly out of their etherial sleep. 



I should not omit to mention one very important precaution in 

 etherizing human beings, and that is not to administer the ether 

 when the patient has a full stomach, for troublesome nausea and 

 unpleasant symptoms are not unfrequently the result. We should 

 not administer the ether to a person who has been drinking ardent 

 spirits for it is likely to make him quite troublesome and he is not 

 easily put under the proper influence of the ether. It is a curi- 

 ous and important fact tliat persons who habitually make use of 

 an excess of ardent spirits withdraw themselves from the benefits 

 of etherization, and that strictly temperate people are always most 

 Jcindly affected by the ether. 



An habitual drunkard is merely made wild and boisterous by a 

 dose of ether vapor that would put any temperate man into a most 

 delightful state of sleep of insensibility, with pleasant dreams, 

 or into an unconscious state of deep sleep. This fact has its 

 Tiioral signifcance,a.iid it also proves that etherization has no anal- 

 ogy to drunkenness, as had been falsely supposed by some medical 

 men. We do not perhaps know exactly what is the real proxi- 

 mate cause of etherial insensibility, but tlius much I do know, 

 it is not analogous to drunkenness, nor is it any form of asphyxia. 

 It is a peculiar state of the nerves as yet little known, but 

 differing wholly from narcotism by opium, &c. In this hasty 



