Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cases of inhalation of ether in labor. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![the sponge when that is used, or by the immediate mixture of the air with the ether vapor, as in the in- haler. Has this been the mode in which ether has been used in the cases of its alleged failure, or imper- fect action] It is exceedingly important to have such cases most fully reported. Has not the negative evidence as much, nay has it not more value, in so important a matter as this, than has the positive. Is not the demand a reasonable one, which has for its object to obtain reports of these cases,—of all the facts in all cases'? It is occasionally found that patients from doubting the use of ether to prevent pain, from fear of the re- sult, and from other considerations, have refused to have it employed in their cases. This of course is to be expected in this early day of its trial, and is not to be regretted. I am told that there are physicians who absolutely refuse to employ ether in midwifery practice at all. They have no confidence in its powers, and will make no such trials with it as might reveal to them what those powers are, or support them in their opposition to it. This mode of viewing the subject comes of a peculiar moral or intellectual idiosyncrasy which absolutely prevents such men from seeing things as do others, or of wishing to see them by experiment, however easy, and however safe, such trials may be. It resolves into denial where there are no facts to determine the judgment —into reasoning, without any true use of reason. It is not to bo regretted that this fact in the history of etherization exists. It says of it just what has been said of, and to all other discoveries, and frequently the most important, and so allies it to them all. Let those who have tried ether in labor, continue to try](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21030698_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
