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ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE EFFECTS OF 
THE INHALATION OF iETHER ON ANIMALS. 
CORRESPONDENT with its operation on the human system has 
hitherto proved the effect of the inhalation of the vapour of sul- 
phuric aether by the brute ; and, altogether, this may be pronounced 
so far satisfactory that, though unlooked-for and undesirable re- 
sults have in some instances followed, sanguine hopes are enter- 
tainable that this stifler of pain and sensation will one day come 
into common use, both with surgeons and veterinary surgeons. 
It would seem out of the course of nature that any great good 
should befall either mankind or brutekind without its attendant 
evil. When railways first came to be travelled upon, every per- 
son going by them conceived they were accomplishing journeys 
with great rapidity at the risk of their lives; and though this 
chance of peril is greatly diminished, and still admits of dimi- 
nution, it has not been, nor ever will be, entirely got rid of. So it 
is likely to turn out to be with aether. We have had some sinister 
and even alarming results, but as yet no fatal ones — at least we 
have heard of none. As, however, our trials and experiments be- 
come multiplied, we shall gain that knowledge and tact in its appli- 
plication which, no doubt, will very much diminish the risk of the 
danger of taking aether. Still, from idiosyncrasy and other causes, 
it is probable there ever will be some remote evil attendant on its 
exhibition. 
In its operation, the aethereal inhalation has shewn a good deal of 
analogy to intoxication. The suffused and congested countenance, 
indicative, along with other symptoms, of congested brain, and 
spinal marrow ag well, all favours this notion. At the same time 
there is something more or something less in the insensibility pro- 
duced by aether than in that resulting from ordinary causes ; some- 
thing different from what common intoxication produces. The 
aetherized (human) patient, though insensible to pain, not infre- 
quently is found to retain, to a greater or l^ss degree, his conscious- 
ness : in other cases, while the insensibility has only been dead- 
ened or diminished, not destroyed, and the patient, feeling no 
more than some trifling “scratching” sensations, has been all 
along perfectly conscious of what was doing to him and about him : 
in the majority of cases — especially in such as have had the inhal- 
ing process most efficiently conducted — there has been a total loss 
both of sensibility and consciousness, the patient being thrown 
by the setherization for a time into a perfect lethargy ; and this in 
some instances continuing after the completion of the operation on 
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