158 REPORT— 1870. 



administrator of the bichloride, Mr. Marshall, of the risk he incurred. In 

 the other case the fatal event did not happen at the time of administration, 

 but five minutes afterwards, and even after return of consciousness, a 

 result entirely new, as far as I know, in the history of anaBsthetic practice. 

 I am unable altogether to account for this result ; and the less able because 

 the patient was never brought fairly under the influence of the narcotic, and 

 received less of it than I have often inhaled in experiment. 



On the whole, the rate of death, taking these two cases as hondfide examples 

 of death, has been, relatively, very small, certainly not more than one in 

 ten thousand administrations ; and I am assured by those who administer 

 the bichloride most frequently that continued practice only increases their 

 confidence in it. 



Dr. Junker, who has now administered bichloride of methylene over two 

 hundred times for the most formidable operation in surgery (ovariotomy), 

 expresses to me his belief that the agent is ijractically free of danger when it 

 is obtained pure, and when ordinary care is taken in administering it ; and 

 other administrators have sent me reports equally favourable. Tor my own 

 part I have simply allowed it to be adjudged upon by independent observers, 

 retaining the opinion I first advanced in respect to it, that it is safer than 

 chloroform, but not absolutely safe ; that, like chloroform, it belongs to a 

 dangerous family of chemical bodies, and that it is still the business of the 

 experimentalist to search for an anaesthetic which shall be equally practical 

 in application and, at the same, better in action. 



Methi/Uc ether. — In two previous Eeports I have noticed methylic ether, 

 and have explained that as a safe anaesthetic agent it has no superior. I have 

 endeavoured consequently to utilize it during the past months, and have ad- 

 ministered it twenty-seven times with success, in cases of surgical operation, 

 in the human subject. Mr. Coles, Mr. Spencer Watson, Mr. Gregson, and 

 others have also administered the anaesthetic with successful results. The 

 object of these applications of methylic ether has been to supply a perfectly 

 safe anaesthetic that would narcotize very rapidly, but with sufficient effect to 

 allow the surgeon to perform short and painful operations. For this purpose 

 the ether acted remarkably well ; in seventeen instances sufficient insensibility 

 was induced to enable the operation of tooth extraction to be performed with- 

 out pain, and in all these instances recovery to perfect consciousness occurred 

 within a minnte. There was also observed another fact, of which more 

 anon, that while the persons who were subjected to the narcotic expressed 

 and felt no suffering from the operation they underwent, they retained so 

 much consciousness as to respond to requests made of them, and to converse 

 during the whole period they were under the anaesthetic influence. 



I have not pressed forward this method of annulling pain, because methylic 

 ether cannot be rendered sufficiently stable for practical daily use. Being a 

 gas, it is necessary either to condense it by pressure, or to saturate ethylic 

 ether with it under the influence of cold. The first of these methods is 

 distrusted as unpleasant to the operator, and the second is uncertain, because 

 with elevation of temperature the light methylic vapour is diffused and lost, 

 so that common ether alone remains. 



The physiological action of methyHc ether deserves nevertheless to be kept 

 in mind : first, becaiise of the power it possesses of destroying sensibility 

 before it destroys the consciousness ; and, secondly, because of its safety. So 

 safe is it that an animal made to sleep with it into unconsciousness may 

 remain breathing it for twelve minutes without dying; and if allowed, 

 apparently, to die, may be recovered by artificial respii-ation so long as seven 



