Closed Ether and a Color Sign

This paper is the result of personal experience as an anesthetist and of rather extensive observations of anesthetic routine in the hospitals of this country and of Europe on the part of one of us (J. B.), and of experimental and theoretical studies on the circulation and respiration under anesthesia by the other. Although we shall have occasion to discuss here the topic of "open" versus "closed" methods of etherization, and in particular to report observations with a simple bag method of administration, the primary purpose of this paper is a more general one, namely, to emphasize the hitherto unappreciated, or at least undefined, importance and significance of a color sign. We shall show that the distinction between pinkness and pallor in a patient under ether is the distinction between a well-sustained circulation and a syncopeal condition — a condition resembling if not identical with shock. We shall show that