History of intravenous anaesthesia with ten years' experience in the use of pentothal sodium.

In the year 1665 Sigismund Elsholtz first attempted intravenous anaesthesia by injecting a solution of opiate to obtain insensibility. It was not until 1872, that Ore, Myer and Witzel experimented with chloral hydrate on animals, but this method was not continued. The real work on intravenous anaesthesia started about I905 when Fedorow, St. Petersburg, reported his results on 530 cases in which he used 0.75 per cent. of Hedonal (CH3 CH, CH, CO (CH.) OCH NH2) in a normal saline solution and claimed that he had no fatalities.