Since the latter end of January I have employed etherization with few and rare exceptions, in every case of labor which has been under my care. And the results, as I already stated in THE LANCET, have been, indeed, most happy and gratifying. I never had the pleasure of watching over a series of more perfect or more rapid recoveries; nor have I once witnessed any disagreeable result to either mother or child. I do not remember a single patient to have taken it who has not afterwards declared her sincere gratitude for its employment, and her indubitable determination to have recourse again to similar means under similar circumstances. Most have subsequently set out, like zealous missionaries, to persuade other friends to avail themselves of the same measure in the hour of suffering. And a number of my most esteemed professional brethren in Edinburgh have adopted it with success and results equal to my own. At the same time, I most sincerely believe that we are, all of us, called upon to employ it, by every principle of true humanity, as well as by every principle of true religion. Medical men may oppose, for a time, the superinduction of anæsthesia in parturition, but they will oppose it in vain; for certainly our patients themselves and their friends will force the use of it upon the profession. The whole question is, I believe, even now, one merely of time. It is not--Shall the practice come to be generally adopted? but--When shall it be generally adopted? And, for my part, I more than doubt if any man (rejecting willingly its benefits) is really justified, on any grounds, moral or medical, in deliberately desiring and asking his patients to shriek and writhe in their agonies for a few months, or a few years longer, in order that, by doing so, they may defer, forsooth, to his professional apathy, or pander to his professional caprices and prejudices.