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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    have heard of many other instances in which ether has been used, and have very rarely learned of any untow- ard results. The statements have been of great relief from suffering and entire safety. A friend has used it in two cases, in one solely on account of the exceeding- ly severe character of former labors. The relief was perfect. What is the precise agency of ether in la- bor, we know not. The time for philosophy has not come. Every case I have seen has been an individ- ual. It has had its own characters. It has present- ed its own facts for observation and study. It is the duty of medical men to put down in writing every case they see, just as they see it. The temptation is to rest satisfied with the wonder which such facts as etherization gives birth to. But physicians have a higher function in this matter. The use of ether is rela- ted to the most interesting and important physiologi- cal processes in nature, and as such should they be noticed, and investigated. There is duty, and there is labor, in this use of ether. No man has a proper sense of his responsible- ness in this matter, who does not regard it in all its relations. He is using an agent which suspends a law of the animal economy. He uses an agent which sep- arates cause and effect, action and pain, in a process in which this relation has been established by uni- versal observation and experience. A process, labor, which has till this day been attended by severer pain, and longer continued than is observed in any other, has been relieved from suffering and in many cases made positively pleasurable. Is not such a fact of the deepest interest, and should it not arrest every mind