ON  KEROSOLENE. 
401 
by  headache,  vertigo,  or  other  unpleasant  symptoms,  and  provided  it  should 
prove  as  free  from  danger  as  ether. 
Subsequently,  I  inhaled  the  new  vapor,  which  Dr.  Hodges,  at  my  re- 
quest, administered.  Complete  insensibility  supervened,  lasting  several 
minutes,  with  some  diminution  of  the  volume  of  the  pulse.  Its  effect  was 
wholly  agreeable,  leaving  neither  headache  nor  nausea,  nor  bad  taste. 
I  have  this  morning  administered  it  to  three  surgical  patients.  The 
first,  a  girl  of  19,  presenting  some  hysteric  tendencies,  having  thrust  some 
twenty  needles  in  her  leg,  was  wholly  insensible  during  the  extraction  of 
four  of  those  which  remained.  Yet  there  was  more  cough  than  I  had  ex- 
pected from  the  wholly  unirritating  odor  of  the  vapor,  more  muscular  rigor 
than  usual  in  favorable  anaesthesia,  and  more  intermittence  of  the  pulse. 
In  a  second  patient,  to  whom  it  was  given  preparatory  to  an  operation 
upon  the  face,  insensibility  was  equally  complete.  But  this  woman  did 
not  take  it  kindly,  and  its  complete  effect  was  attended  hj  so  feeble  and 
intermittent  a  pulse  as  to  lead  me  to  desist  until  she  had  recovered.  A 
second  attempt  reproduced,  with  ansesthesia,  the  feeble  and  intermittent 
pulse,  and  I  again  desisted.  Upon  her  recovery,  I  gave  her  common  ether 
vapor,  which  she  afterwards  said  was  less  agreeable,  but  which  was  fol- 
lowed by  complete  insensibility,  the  pulse  beating  steadily  and  full,  at  76. 
Though  this  patient  perhaps  succumbed  more  readily  to  a  third  anaesthesia, 
there  seemed  to  be  in  the  two  first  trials  a  certain  degree  of  purple  color 
and  asphyxia,  with  its  attendant  spasm,  which  I  have  elsewhere  described 
as  an  occasional  and  disagreeable  symptom  of  attempted  anaesthesia.  To 
guard  against  this  asphyxia,  which  might  possibly  have  resulted  from  the 
folded  towel,  upon  which  I  habitually  administer  ether,  I  tried  in  the  next 
case  an  open  sponge.  The  subject  required  a  considerable  incision  for  a 
mammary  abscess,  and  was  a  patient  of  Dr.  H.  G.  Clark,  with  whose  assent 
I  tried  the  kerosolene.  In  spite  of  the  open  sponge,  the  symptoms  of  as- 
phyxia again  appeared,  suggesting  to  Dr.  Clark,  before  operating  their 
resemblance  to  those  resulting  from  charcoal  gas.  The  color  was  livid, 
and  the  rigidity  marked.  In  each  of  these  cases,  the  quantity  used  was 
from  one  to  two  ounces. 
This  testimony  suggests  so  much  caution  in  the  inhalation  of 
kerosolene  vapor,  that  I  have  not  found  the  physicians  to 
whom  I  have  presented  samples,  eager  to  make  trial  of  it.  Mj 
friend,  Dr.  Thomas  George  Morton,  gave  it  in  four  or  five  in- 
stances to  full  grown  cats  ;  in  no  case  did  it  appear  completely 
to  destroy  sensibility,  though  it  seemed  to  deaden  pain,  and 
generally  if  the  sponge  was  applied  about  15  minutes  to  the 
animal,  convulsions  and  violent  twitchings  resulted.  To  this  I 
may  add  the  testimony  of  mj  collegue,  J.  M.  Maisch,  who  made 
the  experiments  I  have  mentioned  on  its  boiling  points,  and  un- 
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