It soon became apparent, however, that the vapour of ether was capable of inducing a state of perfect quietude, with entire absence of pain, during all kinds of surgical operations. From the 28th of January the ether produced the desired effect in every operation that was performed in St. George’s Hospital, until the time when chloroform was introduced as a substitute for this agent.[33] Ether was employed in Paris a few days after its first application in London, and in a short time it was in use nearly all over the world. On the 19th of January 1847, just a month after the first application of ether for the prevention of pain on this side of the Atlantic, Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh administered the vapour in a case of labour, and ascertained that it was capable of removing the sufferings of the patient without interfering with the process of parturition. Etherization was soon afterwards employed in the reduction of strangulated hernia and dislocations of the femur and humerus, some of them of long standing. It was also used with advantage in neuralgia, tetanus, and the convulsions of infants, and it became more and more general in surgical operations. No great improvement in the practice of medicine was probably ever established so readily as the inhalation of ether for the prevention of pain. Yet it met with stout opposition in certain quarters, and when a serious operation in which ether had been used terminated unfavourably, there were those who attributed the patient’s death to the new practice, although numerous other patients had sunk in exactly the same manner long before ether was used. In one of these cases a coroner’s inquest was held, and the jury returned a verdict that the death of the deceased was caused by the inhalation of ether, although the patient had not even been made insensible by it, had felt all the pain of the operation, which was retarded by her struggles, and did not die till the third day. Notwithstanding a certain amount of opposition and mistrust, the inhalation of ether was becoming more general in the course of the year 1847, and there is every reason to conclude that it would very soon have obtained the complete confidence of the medical profession and the public, had it not been for circumstances which must next be considered.