Report of a committee of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, on the alleged dangers which accompany the inhalation of the vapor of sulphuric ether.

  • Boston Society for Medical Improvement (Mass.)
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of a committee of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, on the alleged dangers which accompany the inhalation of the vapor of sulphuric ether. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    3d. . Proper precautions being taken, sulphuric ether will pro- duce entire insensibility .in all cases, and no anmsthetic requires so few precautions in its use. 4th. There is no recorded case of death, known to the Com- mittee, attributed to sulphuric ether, which cannot be explained on some other ground equally plausible, or in which, if it were possible to repeat the experiment, insensibility could not have been produced and death avoided. This cannot be said of chlo- roform. 5th. In view of all these facts, the use of ether in armies, to the extent which its bulk will permit, ought to be obligatory, at least in a moral point of view. 6th. The advantages of chloroform are exclusively those of convenience. Its dangers are not averted by its admixture with sulphuric ether in any proportions. The combination of these two agents cannot be too strongly denounced as a treacherous and dangerous compound. Chloric ether, being a solution of chloro- form in alcohol, merits the same condemnation. R. M. HODGES, GEO. HAYWARD, S. D. TOWNSEND, C. T. JACKSON, J. BAXTER UPHAM. The foregoing report was accepted, and its conclusions adopted by the Society. Francis Minot, Secretary.