AN ETHEREAL EXPERIENCE.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXX, Issue 1514, 17 May 1898, Page 2

AN ETHEREAL EXPERIENCE.

Have you over had an operation performed under ether? It is to be hoped you have not, for no operation is a pleasant necessity, but anyone who has been forced to undergo one will have had pood cause to be thankful for the introduction of ether as an anresthetic. It is both safor and more pleasant to take than chloroform, which it has now almost superseded, especially among hicrh-class surgeons, and, as everyone wants to know everything now-a-days, those who care to learn what such an operation Mould be like, should it ever be their fate, may do so from what follows: Imagine yourself, then, lying in bed suffering from the ever-present sense of pain and danger to life resulting from the malady, wliaTever it may be, that has made the operation necessary. The pain and the sense of danger have probably been with you so lon<r that they have become a part of your life, and you catch yourself speculating as to what life will be like without them, until you look forwaid to the arrival of the surgeon with an anxiety in which hope and fear are curiously mingled. At the appointed moment two seriouslookinp: gentlemen enter the room with black bags containing potential relief for your suffering, and perhaps many years of added life. One of them is the surgeon, and while he is getting his weapons ready, the other gentleman starts his ether appara!us until the place smells like a cross between a chemical laboratory and a photographer's dark room. When all is ready a flexible india rubber mask is placed over your face, and you are (old to breathe regularly just rs though you were going to have a tooth out under laughing gas. In a moment or two vou are seized with a choking cough which is almost instantly stopped by a most delightful sensation of careless rest.

Then you begin to slide gently and rapidly out of the realm of consciousness. The hght fade-* into a soft darkness with nothing horrible about it, just such a darkness as it is pleasant to go to sleep in. hi the midst of this darkness you see a brightred spot which rapidly fades away, and as it gets dimmer so do you- se'--es fade with it, until at last you have merely the consciousness of passive existence. Yon have no will or strength of mind or body, and no care whether yon wake again or not, no thoughts ehaf>e themselves in your mind, and the world and all cares and concerns seem to be removed from you into an infinite distance. Everything is darkness and the most profound and restful silence, and then gradually the light steals back again like the dawn of day stealing into some deep, dark ravine. So gradually and quietly does consciousness return that you are unable exactly to say when you wake. The room and the figures in it slowly take shape out of the darkness. You recognise them, and at the same time you hear voices coming nearer and nearer, and sounding more and more distinctly. You look at the clock, remembering now quite well what it has all beet) about, and you find that your eternity of trance has lasted about fifteen minutes. Then comes a sense of pain and intense nausea—the latter is due to the after effects of the ether, but the pain is not the old one that had made your former life -i misery. It is the smart and sting of the flesh-wound,and you look at yourself and see the bandages, and thank your stars that it is all over.— Pearson's Society Neus.