A MAGIC PILL THAT RELAXES, soothes, comforts, prevents all pain, staves off bad dreams and thoughts, and provides a cooperative patient during medical procedures. Such a magic pill is the pharmaceutical industry’s ultimate fantasy. In reality, it’s already been found, and it’s not a pill and it’s not natural. It’s a gas that’s synthesized.
有种魔法药片可以让人放松，感到平静，舒适，预防疼痛，摆脱噩梦和消极的想法，让病患配合医疗操作。这种魔法药片简直是制药产业的终极幻想。事实上它已经出现了，不是以药片形式，也并非天然存在。它是一种合成气体。
A volatile is a fluid that in air at room temperature would rather exist as a gas. Volatiles are part of everyday life.They are components of cleaning fluids, bleach, paint, nail polish remover, and, most important for me, my anesthesia gases. The term “volatile anesthesia” means breathing a gas to induce the anesthetic state. Ether is one such volatile that loves to become a gas. Its magical benefit to health care—painless surgery—was first shown in the 1840s, but its history goes much farther back in time.
挥发性物质是在室温空气中以气体形式存在的一种液体。挥发性物质在我们的日常生活中无处不在。清洁液体，漂白剂，油漆，洗甲水，还有对我而言最重要的麻醉气体中都有这些成分。“挥发药物麻醉”指通过吸入麻醉气体进行麻醉诱导。乙醚就是一种易变成气体的挥发性物质。在19世纪40年代，乙醚首次在无痛手术方面显现优势，但其实它的历史要追溯到更久以前。
The Muslim cleric and alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan, who lived in Persia in the eighth century, likely came close to synthesizing ether. He is known to have used the components needed to synthesize it, including sulfur, which is necessary to create the reaction with alcohol. But it remains speculation that Jabir actually managed to produce ether. (Jabir was a remarkable man regardless of his role in synthesizing ether. As a noted philosopher, geographer, and linguist, he is said to have written some three thousand books. The Latin form of Jabir is “Geber,” and his prolific and wide-ranging writing is considered by experts in etymology to have inspired the word “gibberish.”)
8世纪生活在波斯的穆斯林传教士、炼金术师Jabir Ibn Hayyan差点合成了乙醚。据说他已经使用合成乙醚的重要成分，包括能与酒精发生反应必需的硫磺。但Jabir已经掌握制造ether的方法仍只是推论。（除乙醚合成之外，Jabir在其他方面也卓有成就。他是著名的哲学家，地理学家，语言学家，据说著作有三千多部。拉丁文中的Jabir写作" Geber", 语源专家认为他丰富而涉猎广泛的著作促使了" gibberish" 一词的产生。）
In 1540, Valerius Cordus, a German physician, botanist, and alchemist whose life was only a flash—he was twenty-nine when he died—combined fortified wine and sulfuric acid to form what he called oleum dulce vitrioli, the delicious Renaissance Latin term translated as “sweet oil of vitriol.” Its medicinal properties were noted and came to be of even greater interest when Cordus’s contemporary Paracelsus, the Swiss-German polymath, found that ether caused chickens to sleep. Paracelsus is believed to have tested ether to treat seizures, the result unclear. He might have gone on to discover the painless state created by the sweet oil of vitriol, allowing for surgical invasions of the body, but he, too, died prematurely and mysteriously.
1540年，德国的医生，植物学家，炼金术师Valerius Cordus，将强化葡萄酒和硫磺酸混合制造出一种物质，他称其为oleum dulce vitrioli，这来自于文艺复兴时期的诱人的拉丁文名称译作"硫酸甜油"。Valerius Cordus 生命短暂，死时只有29岁。硫酸甜油的药用性能显著，以至于与Cordus 同时代的Paracelsus，一名瑞士-德国的博学家，发现乙醚可以使小鸡昏睡之后，引发了人们更大的好奇。人们认为Paracelsus用乙醚进行了癫痫治疗的试验，但结果不为人知。或许他已经发现硫酸甜油可以造成无痛状态，让身体进行有创手术，但他也像Cordus一样神秘的英年早逝了。
Another two centuries passed before the German-born chemist August Sigmund Frobenius published an article in 1729 describing the method of synthesizing oleum dolce vitrioli and calling it “ether,” from the Greek base word meaning “to alight” or “to blaze” (ether is very flammable). Ether also connotes the upper air, which is fitting because it is a volatile that readily changes from liquid to gas.
两百年后，1729年，德国出生的化学家 August Sigmund Frobenius 发表了一篇论作，阐述了合成oleum dolce vitrioli 的方法，并称其"乙醚 ether"，来自希腊语的词根有"点燃"、"闪耀"的意思（乙醚十分易燃）。ether同时有上层空气的意思，这层意思也很恰当，因为它很容易从液态挥发为气态。
Near this time, pneumatic medicine—inhaling gases as a means of therapy—flourished, leading to the discovery of the euphoria one can attain by inhaling the fumes of ether. Medical students, then as today, searched for new means to distract themselves from the pyretic intensity of their work and found that “ether frolics” provided that relief.
也就是这个时候，气动医学——将吸入气体作为一种治疗方法——开始繁荣发展，人们发现吸入乙醚烟可以达到欣快状态。当时的医学生，像现代的医学生一样，寻找新的方法让他们从头痛的工作中解脱出来，"乙醚消遣"让他们得到了缓解。
(慧慧子注：The pneumatic school of medicine was an ancient school of medicine in ancient Greece and Rome. 气动学校是古希腊和罗马的古老医学院。)
Medical cures of the time weren’t founded in science and included treating asthma with dried, ground toad; holding a live puppy to the stomach to deal with bowel obstructions; applying leeches to bleed bad humors; and using dog feces as a remedy for sore throat. But as alchemy—the belief of transforming one compound into another, such as lead into gold—evolved into chemistry, the individual gases composing air (oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide) were isolated. Joseph Priestley, a chemist and noted grammarian—he wrote The Rudiments of English Grammar—produced nitrous oxide for the first time in 1772. By 1800, the chemist Humphry Dav had noted that this colorless and odorless gas caused a state of euphoria and might even be used to prevent pain during surgery. He didn’t pursue that purpose. By the turn of the century, nitrous oxide demonstrations for comic relief had become a business.
那个时代，医学疗法并非以科学理论为基础，人们会用晒干的地蟾蜍治疗哮喘，把活的小狗怀抱在胃的位置治疗肠梗阻，用水蛭吸出恶性体液，用狗粪便治疗咽喉疼痛。然而点金术——这种将一种物质转化成另一种物质（如黄金）的教义——逐渐发展为化学，空气中的各种成分（氧气，氮气，二氧化碳）被分离出来。Joseph Priestley，著名的化学家，著有《英语语法入门》的文法学家，在1772年首次制造出氧化亚氮。1800年，化学家Humphry Davy注意到这种无色无味的气体会致人欣快，可用于术中止痛。他并未继续研究氧化亚氮的这个用途。到了19世纪末20世纪初，喜剧化的氧化亚氮演示已经发展成了一门生意。
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