The Gazette des Hopitaux narrates what is supposed to have
been a cure of cholera by ether. M. Bruno Taron surgeon-major of the Ottoman army, was a physician at Marseilles in 1837, during the prevalence of the epidemic. "He was without help, in the middle of the ,night, and without any remedy, but a large bottle of sulphuric ether which happened to be in his chamber. Having no other resource, I seized this large bottle,' says M. Taron, and I inhaled it freely. Immediately my respiration, which had been oppressed, became more free, and I felt a sensation of relief and general comfort. Afterwards, the perspiration, which had been cold and wearisome, became warm and gentle. The functions of my senses were soon suspended, and I slept profoundly. - All these happy ame- liorations took place promptly under the influence of the inhalation of sulphuric ether. I slept, without pain or disturbance, for six hours; after which I avtoke, feeling all over me great weakness. I had unconsciously been in a perspiration through the night. My strength returned by degrees. 1 was completely cured: M. Taron finished his letter by confessing, that, not knowing at t..IA time the power exercised by ether over the nervous centres, he did not attribute his sadden care to it, but to a caprice of Nature."
A successful application of chloroform to tetanus is reported by Mr. Asbury, a surgeon at Enfield. A man-servant in the family of Lady Dorothy? Elizabeth Palk had cut off the tip of his finger; in ten days afterwards trismus [lock-jaws came on, with a difficulty of swallowing like that in hydrophobia. In three days more tetanus set in, affecting all the muscles of the body with painful spasmodic contractions and extreme rigidity; the head, neck, and lower extremities being bent backwards. Mr. Asbury saw that death must take place in a few hours, unless some powerful remedy were applied with success: he determined on using chloroform, with purgatives. The first application was made on the second day of tetanus, and sleep was procured for eighteen minutes; on the third day it was applied twice, and procured sleep for twenty minutes each time. The chloroform has since been administered daily, with the same success, for twenty-four days. The young man can now walk alone arid masticate food. The chloroform vapour was also applied to the wound; and in two minutes, the thumb, which had been stiff and extended, dropped into the palm of the hand. The vapour was also. ap- plied to blistered surfaces on the back, with equal success.
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