Ether, in chemistry, is a colorless, highly flammable liquid with a strong, sweet smell. Ether vapor causes unconsciousness when inhaled. For many years, physicians used ether as a general anesthetic during surgery. General anesthetics make patients unconscious and insensitive to pain. Ether was one of the first general anesthetics to be developed.
Credit for the first use of ether as a surgical anesthetic is given to Crawford W. Long, a Georgia doctor. Long used ether during surgery as early as 1842. However, ether anesthesia did not come into wide use until after 1846, when William T. G. Morton, a Boston dentist, first publicly demonstrated it at the Massachusetts General Hospital. For the next hundred years, ether served as the standard to which all other anesthetics were compared.
Ether’s popularity declined during the mid-1900’s, largely because of the increasing use of electrical equipment in the operating room. The concentrated ether vapor needed for anesthesia produced a danger of fire and explosions when used around electrical equipment. In addition, many patients took a long time to wake up from ether anesthesia, and they frequently experienced nausea and vomiting afterward. To avoid these problems, scientists developed halothane and other general anesthetics that are nonflammable and less irritating.
Today, ether is rarely used as an anesthetic. It does serve, however, as a solvent in the manufacture of perfumes, explosives, and many other products. Ether’s chemical name is ethyl ether or diethyl ether.
