The evolution of anaesthesia.

The discovery of di-ethyl ether has been attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, an Arabian philosopher who flourished in the eighth century and was a close friend of Ja'far al-Barmaki, the Wazir to Harun ar-Rashid, immortalized in the "Thousand and One Nights". Similarly, Raymund Lull or Lully, a Majorcan alchemist of the thirteenth century, has also been credited with the discovery, but there seems to be no evidence to substantiate these claims. The curious reader is referred to an article, "The Discovery of Ether", Anaesthesia (1949), 4, 188, for a fuller consideration of these persons. The first unequivocal description of ether, under the name, "oleum vitrioli dulce" ("sweet oil of vitriol"), occurs in Conrad Gesner's edition of the works of Valerius Cordus, published in Strasburg in 1561 (De artificiosis extractionibus, Lib. 3, Cap. 12). A second, and more accurate, edition was prepared by Peter Condemberg ten years later. "Oil of vitriol" was the name of what we now call sulphuric acid; the "sweet oil" was obtained by the distillation of sulphuric acid and spirits of wine. Cordus advocated the internal use of ether in a dose of one to three drops in a moderate quantity of wine as a remedy for such diverse disorders as ulcer of the bladder and pneumonia.