The statement of these facts has been ascribed to Faraday, under whose management the journal was at that time published. But, whoever wrote or whoever may have read the statement, it was, for all useful purposes, as much neglected as was Davy's suggestion of the utility of the nitrous oxide. The last sentence, quoted as it was by Pereira and others writing on the uses of ether, excited much more fear of death than hope of ease from ether-inhalation. Such effects as are described in it are of exceeding rarity; their danger was greatly over-estimated; but the account of them was enough to discourage all useful research. But, as the sulphuric ether would "produce effects very similar to those occasioned by nitrous oxide," and was much the more easy to procure, it came to be often inhaled, for amusement, by chemists' lads and by pupils in the dispensaries of surgeons. It was often thus used by young people in many places of the United States. They had what they called "ether-frolics," in which they inhaled ether till they became merry, or in some other way absurdly excited or, sometimes, completely insensible. Among those who had joined in these ether-frolics was Dr. Wilhite of Anderson, South Carolina. In one of them, in 1839, when nearly all of the party had been inhaling and some had been laughing, some crying, some fighting--just as they might have done if they had had the nitrous oxide gas--Wilhite, then a lad of seventeen, saw a negro boy at the door and tried to persuade him to inhale. He refused and resisted all attempts to make him do it, till they seized him, held him down, and kept a handkerchief wet with ether close over his mouth. Presently his struggles ceased; he lay insensible, snoring, past all arousing; he seemed to be dying. And thus he lay for an hour, till medical help came and, with shaking, slapping, and cold splashing, he was awakened and suffered no harm.