ON ANAESTHETICS. 171 



such an arrangement of flannel and gauze a most equable type of 

 anaesthesia can be maintained. Without here entering into various 

 clinical details, I am desirous of placing on record my complete conver- 

 sion to ' open ' as opposed to ' close ' etherisation. I am certainly not 

 proud of the fact that for many years my energies have been directed 

 towards developments and improvements in a system of etherisation 

 which, although still advantageous in certain cases, is without doubt 

 faulty in it3 fundamental principles and therefore not suited for routine 

 use. A new era in anaesthesia is commencing in this country, and it is 

 gratifying to feel that its commencement has been determined both by 

 clinical and by physiological considerations. We are completely aban- 

 doning the ether cone and its countless modifications. We are almost 

 completely abandoning the time-honoured and ingenious inhalers of 

 Clover and Ormsby, over the intricacies of which so much valuable time 

 has been expended. Now that we know the possibilities and advantages 

 of simpler methods and slow inductions, it is almost unintelligible that 

 we should have tolerated these complex inhalers for so long. But it 

 must be remembered that it is quite as much the element of slow induc- 

 tion as the element involved in the open method that is responsible for 

 the success of the new system. The irregular ether percentages neces- 

 sarily breathed from an ether inhaler, whether it be of the cone or 

 reservoir type, must, as we now know, introduce difficulties which do 

 not arise when an equable ether vapour is continuously breathed. 

 For many years so much attention was paid in this country to the 

 elaboration of the close system of ether administration that no one 

 seems to have had the patience to try slow induction methods. All 

 the teaching of earlier times was opposed to such methods. Thanks, 

 however, partly to the example set us by American surgeons, and partly 

 to the physiological observations made by this Committee, we now 

 understand their advantages. Moreover, by means of appliances for 

 securing oral as opposed to nasal respiration, by the use of atropine to 

 lessen mucus secretion, and by the employment of morphine, and 

 other drugs in suitable cases, to intensify the action of the anaesthetic, 

 vn are now able to avail ourselves of the striking advantages of equable 

 etherisation free from rebreathing. We have, in a word, achieved that 

 most difficult of all achievements — we have thrown off elaborations and 

 complications one by one till we have secured the utmost simplicity 

 in procedure, and as that simplicity is associated with a corresponding 

 degree of safety, there seems every probability that less and less will be 

 heard of rival appliances for the percentage administration of chloroform 

 and more and more of this new system of etherisation. 



Body Metabolism in Cancer. — Interim Report o\ the Committee, consisting 

 of Professor C. S. Sherrington (Chairman) and Dr. S. M. Copeman 

 (Secretary). 



In continuation of the experimental work on mice, an account of 

 which was given in the report for last year, we had proposed to test 

 the effect on the human subject of various substances derived from the 

 genital glands, more especially nuclein and its derivatives. 



