I hold that his perseverance and discernment, or rashness and luck, should now entitle him to the emoluments of a discoverer.

Would surgeons have given a surgical dose of ether vapor, on all the then existing evidence, five minutes before Morton's first successful experiment? (it was assuredly difficult enough to persuade them to do so afterwards;) and these experiments he made at his own discretion or indiscretion, and at his own risk, and after they were made the discovery had been made.

I am, very truly, yours,

HENRY J. BIGELOW.

A NEW ANESTHETIC. - KEROSOLENE.1

MESSRS. EDITORS, In reply to your request for information concerning the "kerosolene," and although the evidence is incomplete, I see no impropriety in my furnishing you with such observations as I have been able to make since its introduction to the Medical Society last evening, by Mr. Merrill, Dr. Dickinson, and Dr. Bowditch, as an untried agent of suspected anæsthetic properties, which had accidentally affected a man sent in to clean a cistern at the kerosene works, and which had been afterwards tried on flies and mice.

This fluid presents remarkable properties. It is tasteless as water, volatile and inflammable as ether, though burning with a dense white light. It has a faint chloroform odor, which as it evaporates changes to that of coal tar, and then disappears absolutely and altogether; so that a handkerchief saturated with the fluid when dry at the end of a few minutes has no odor at all, and the room or atmosphere where it has been used shows no trace of its presence. Both ether and chloroform leave, in different degrees, a persistent, fade, and stale aroma after evaporation, as is well known. They are also far less agreeable to inhale than this new agent, which has thus an obvious advantage over either of them.

A few whiffs were sufficient assurance of its efficacy as an anæsthetic, which, with its other qualities, as I ventured to remark, would place the kerosolene beyond any known anæsthetic, provided its use was not followed by headache,

1 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, July 11, 1861.

vertigo, or other unpleasant symptoms, and it should prove

as free from danger as ether. Subsequently I inhaled the administered at my request.

new vapor, which Dr. Hodges Complete insensibility super

vened, lasting several minutes, with some diminution of the volume of the pulse. Its effect was wholly agreeable, leaving neither headache, nausea, nor bad taste.

I have this morning administered it to three surgical patients. The first, a girl of nineteen, presenting some hysteric tendencies, had thrust some twenty needles into her leg, and was wholly insensible during the extraction of four of those which remained. Yet there was more cough than I had expected from the wholly unirritating odor of the vapor, more muscular rigor than usual in favorable anæsthesia, and more intermittence of the pulse.

A

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 by so feeble and intermittent a pulse as to lead me to desist until she had recovered. second attempt reproduced, with the anesthesia, a 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 followed by complete insensibility, the pulse beating steadily and full at seventy-six. Though this patient perhaps succumbed more readily to the third anesthesia, there seemed to be in the first two 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 anæsthesia. To guard against this asphyxia, which might possibly have resulted from the folded towel with 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 asphyxia again appeared, suggesting to Dr. Clark a 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.

In conclusion, it may be remarked of these three cases, that they are insufficient for satisfactory demonstration, and that their common and unfavorable symptoms may have been but a coincidence; yet they suggest some caution in the use of the kerosolene vapor. It is probably more potent than that of ether, requires a freer admixture of air, and may produce upon the system some impression or influence other than that of the mere intoxication attendant upon the use of ether. In awaiting further evidence, it can be considered established that kerosolene is an anæsthetic of undoubted efficiency, and that it possesses certain remarkable and attractive properties peculiar to itself.

BOSTON, July 9, 1861.

HENRY J. BIGELOW.

RHIGOLENE,1

A PETROLEUM NAPHTHA FOR PRODUCING ANESTHESIA BY FREEZING.2

THE above name is proposed as convenient to designate a petroleum naphtha boiling at 70° F., one of the most volatile liquids obtained by the distillation of petroleum, and which has been applied to the production of cold by evaporation. It is a hydrocarbon, wholly destitute of oxygen, and is the lightest of all known liquids, having a specific gravity of 0.625. It has been shown that petroleum, vaporized and carefully condensed at different temperatures, offers a regular series of products which present more material differences than that of mere degree of volatility.3 The present product is probably a combination of some of the known derivatives of petroleum with those volatile and gaseous ones not yet fully examined, and to which this fluid owes its great volatility. A few of these combinations are already known in trade as benzolene, kerosene, kerosolene, gasolenc, etc., all of them naphthas, but varying with different manufacturers.

1 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April 19, 1866.

2 Rhigolene, from piyos, extreme cold, to which is added the euphonious termination of most of the other petroleum naphthas. About three weeks after my first experiments with rhigolene, I first learned that Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh, had lately employed "kerosolene" for this purpose.

3 See "Researches on the Volatile Hydrocarbons, with References to Authorities," by C. M. Warren. American Journal of Science and Arts, July, September, and November, 1865.