No. 129.] - 173 



sketch of the method of etherizing man and animals I have avoided 

 many details that might prove entertaining to the reader, and an 

 array of cases which might have been required at the time I first 

 made this curious discovery known to the world, but which are now 

 unnecessary, since the public know that the effects here stated 

 have been produced in hundreds of thousands of cases in Europe, 

 Asia and America, in all lands where I have made known this 

 means of alleviating sufferings in man and in animals. 



The unfortunate substitution of pure chloroform for ether and 

 for the mixture of ether and chloroform, has caused all the fatal 

 accidents that have happened, and thus the use of ether itself, so 

 unfortunately confounded with that dense and dangerous agent, 

 has been in a measure checked, because people do not discrimi- 

 nate between them, and know that etherization by means of pure 

 sulphuric ether vapor and even with a small poportion of chlo- 

 roform mixed with it, for the ether vapor lightens that of the 

 denser vapor. 



Shortly before publishing my discovery of the anaesthetic 

 effects of ether vapor, I made use of a solution of chloroform 

 in alcohol, called at the time strong chloric ether, but it was^ 

 found to be a very uncertain preparation, and one that is readily 

 decomposed by the action of water in a wet sponge, hence it is" 

 not thought so proper for surgical use. It is however employed to 

 some extent in the Mass. General Hospital, but very unskilfully, 

 as it is applied on a very large wet sponge, so that nothing but 

 pure chloroform is really administered when the surgeons sup- 

 pose they are administering alcohol with it. The water in the 

 sponge really holds back every particle of the alcohol, so that none 

 of it is volatilized, and therefore it is not inhaled with the 

 chloroform. When chloroform is dissolved in sulphuric ether, the 

 two liquids volatilize together, and this is truly a scientific 

 conbination of nearly equally volatile ingredients. 



CHARLES T. JACKSON, M. D., 

 Chevalier de la Legion D^Honneur, 

 Jissayer to the State of Massachusetts^ kc. 



