DIVINYL ETHER

Abstract

Within the past decade a widespread interest has been shown in a variety of substances that have been recommended for surgical anesthesia. It can be said as a commonplace that, when so many substances are used for anesthesia, not one is ideal from the stand-point of the patient, the surgeon and the anesthetist. This paper is a report of our experiences with still another substance which, while not new, has only recently been suggested by Leake and his associates as an agent for surgical anesthesia. In 1930, Leake and Chen¹ predicted from a consideration of the chemopharmacologic properties of diethyl ether and of ethylene that compounds combining the chemical characteristics of each would be interesting general anesthetic agents. Such a compound would be divinyl ether (fig. 1). Studies made by these investigators and by Knoefel, Guedel and Leake² seemed to bear out their prediction. Their observations indicated that