RELATIONS AND VALUES OF THE ANAESTHETICS. 
259 
method, is often a valuable adjunct where rapid anaesthesia 
is desired with a minimum expenditure of fluid.* In this 
connection, some experiences of Dr. Squibb, as detailed in 
Ephemeris for July, 1884, f are of especial interest: 
\ 
In the use of ether as an anaesthetic there is great room 
for reform, Just how small a quantity of ether would pro¬ 
duce anaesthsia in the average adult subject is not known, 
though that is exactly what is wanted, but it is entirely safe 
to say that more than one-half the ether taken for this pur¬ 
pose is wasted ; and not simply wasted, but injuriously satu¬ 
rates both the patient and the attendants. Indeed, the writer 
has frequentlv breathed the atmosphere of small ante-rooms, 
where patients were being etherized, where the proportion of 
waste ether vapor was so large as to render the air pretty 
certainly explosive. Ether vapor has a very considerable 
tension or power of diffusion, and air becomes nearly satu¬ 
rated with it very quickly and very easily; and such air is 
very actively anaesthetic. It is a habit in laboratories, when 
a flask or bottle, having been washed, has to be dried quickly 
for use, to rinse the water out first with a little alcohol, and 
then to rinse out the alcohol with a little ether. Then by in¬ 
serting a tube in the bottom of the bottle and drawing the air 
into the lungs, by applying the mouth to the other end of the 
tube, all the ether may be quickly drawn out in the state of 
vapor, leaving the bottle dry. Now this does very well with 
small bottles, but when the ether with which a two-gallon 
bottle has been rinsed out, is poured out as far as possible, 
about one or two fluid drachms remain in the bottle, spread 
over the interior. The first and second inspirations through 
the tube are but partial, being interrupted by coughing or 
closure of the glottis, but they serve to so anaesthetize the air 
passages, that the fourth and fifth inspirations and all that fol¬ 
low may be deep and full. It has often happened to the 
writer, that before the ether vapor is all drawn out of the 
bottle the stage of excitement had passed, and that of 
anaesthesia is so well advanced that the tube can no longer 
be held to the lips. In a personal experiment based upon 
this experience, a half fluid ounce <of ether contained in an 
eight-ounce, wide-mouthed bottle, were shaken round the 
bottle and the vapor simply smelled deeply with full inspira- 
*For detaib and description of this apparatus, I will refer my readers to the 
Transactions of The New York State Medical Society for 1871, p. 197. 
t Yol. II., p. 631. 
0 
