Cases of inhalation of ether in labor.

  • Channing, Walter, 1786-1876.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

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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    In publishing another edition of this pamphlet, I beg leave to call the attention of the reader to the cautions which are given in it in regard to the trials of Ether in Labor. As has been said at home and abroad, these trials are to be regarded as experi- mental. Time is to determine what is to be the precise place of this agent in midwifery practice. I have heard of trials by different physicians in this city and neighborhood, of Ether in Labor. In one case, in which it was used during the process, it was afterwards inhaled to relieve after pains, from which the patient had in former labor suffered more than in the pains of delivery. It was fully used, and was very successful. In four cases in the hands of another physician, its power over pain was very striking. In one more so than in any one I have met with. The patient was a feeble person, and after a previous labor had been in great danger from puer- peral fever. This patient was as quiet, as perfectly at rest while etherized, and while efficient pains were present, as if she had been in sound sleep. Her child was born without the least consciousness on her part of the fact. She recovered perfectly well. In one of these four cases severe hemorrhage occurred in about an hour after delivery. Its effects were of some