and Hammersmith Hospital, London SUMMARY

intravenously to induce anaesthesia in 100 adult patients for operations ranging from minor gynae-cological procedures to pneumonectomies and gastrectomies. The drug when given in a 5 per cent solution produced rapid anaesthesia of short duration associated with a transient respiratory stimulation followed by a brief period of apnoea. No signifi-cant effects were observed on the rate and rhythm of the heart, on blood pressure, or on cardiac output. There was, however, an increase in skin blood flow as measured by digital plethysmo-graphy. Thirty-three patients developed venous throm-bosis around the site of injection and this incidence is too high to justify its use except in special circumstances. In modern clinical practice the intravenous agent is generally reprded by patients and anaesthetists alike as the most convenient and the most satis-factory method of inducing anaesthesia, and thio-pentone is the most widely used drug for this purpose. Its limitations and disadvantages, how-ever, are well known and research has continued to find a more suitable drug especially for the elderly and for out-patients. Some years ago the steroid anaesthetic hydroxydione was introduced as an alternative to thiopentone (Laubach, P'An and Rudel, 1955; Murphy, Gaudagni and De Bon, 1955) but the delay in the onset of unconscious-ness, among other factors, severely restricted its usefulness. More recently a eugenol derivative, 2-methoxy-4-allylphenoxyacetic acid-N:N- di-ethylamide (G.29.505) has been investigated widely on the European continent (Frey and Herr