401 
Extracts from Domestic Journals. 
INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF INHALATION OF ETHER. 
[From “The Brighton Guardian” of June 2d, 1847.] 
Sir, — Through the medium of the daily press, the public have 
been made acquainted with the powerful efficacy of the vapour of 
ether in annihilating suffering during surgical operations. The 
question of the possibility of any ill effects to the general health 
arising from so subtile an agent has not been mooted ; and, with 
the startling exception of an occasional coroner’s inquest on the 
bodies of those who have died after operations performed during 
the state of insensibility consequent upon the use of ether, the 
public have neither read nor heard of any other than the most 
triumphant success of this new remedy. They have been taught 
to expect from its administration perfect immunity from pain and 
suffering of all kind, without fear of after-consequences. 
On this latter point, through the medium of the same channel — 
the columns of the daily press — I would disabuse the public mind. 
We are told that in the majority of cases, after inhaling the 
vapour for three or four minutes, a state of absolute unconscious- 
ness, a corpse-like condition, is induced, during which the most 
severe and painful operations may be performed without the 
patient evincing the slightest evidence of sensation, — that the 
patient wakes, as it were, from a “ pleasant dream,” and feels no 
inconvenience whatever from the inhalation. * This is, I fear, the 
bright side of the picture ; it is, at least, a proposition from which 
I dissent. 
Let us inquire what is the condition of the pulse, of the respi- 
ration and countenance during the state of insensibility, and on 
what these conditions depend. 
The circulation at first becomes rapid, then slow and feeble ; the 
respiration, bearing a due relation to the frequency of the pulse, 
becomes laboured and stertorous, the countenance is livid, the lips 
and tongue are blue, the pupils are dilated, the muscles universally 
relaxed, the functions of the brain and nervous system are sus- 
pended, sensation is annihilated, and the patient, to all intents and 
purposes, for the time being, is a senseless corpse. 
It has been said by M. Roux and others, that this state bears a 
close analogy to drunkenness ; by Baron Flourens, that it resem- 
bles asphyxia; and by others it has been likened to apoplexy of 
