Diethyl ether, the anesthetic that launched modern surgery in 1846, is largely obsolete in wealthy nations but has not disappeared entirely. It still sees limited use as a surgical anesthetic in some developing countries, and it remains a common solvent in chemistry labs and industrial settings. So the short answer is yes, ether is still used, just not in the way most people picture it.
Why Ether Fell Out of Favor
Ether dominated surgery for nearly a century, but it came with serious drawbacks. Its flash point sits at minus 49°F, making it a Class IA flammable liquid. In a modern operating room filled with electronic monitors, cauterizing tools, and oxygen lines, that level of flammability is a genuine explosion risk. Ether also tends to form explosive peroxides when exposed to air and light over time, making even storage hazardous.
Beyond the fire risk, ether was simply unpleasant. When it was the standard anesthetic, roughly 60% of surgical patients experienced postoperative nausea and vomiting. Induction was slow, the smell was overpowering, and patients took a long time to wake up. As safer alternatives arrived through the 20th century, hospitals in developed countries phased ether out entirely.
Where Ether Is Still Used in Surgery
In parts of the developing world, ether hasn’t completely vanished from operating rooms. Healthcare systems with limited funding and infrastructure sometimes can’t access or afford the newer anesthetic gases and the monitoring equipment they require. Ether has one remarkable advantage in these settings: it’s forgiving. Unlike most modern anesthetics, ether does not suppress breathing or damage the cardiovascular system at clinical doses. This means it can be administered relatively safely by practitioners without formal anesthesiology training and without supplemental oxygen, pulse oximeters, or endotracheal tubes.
Halothane has largely replaced ether as the go-to volatile anesthetic in low-resource settings, but even halothane is now considered outdated by wealthy-nation standards. Some researchers have argued for reexamining ether’s role in these contexts, pointing out that its safety margin is wider than almost any alternative when monitoring equipment is unavailable. Still, its use continues to shrink as global supply chains make newer agents more accessible and as ether itself becomes harder to obtain.
What Replaced It
Modern surgery uses a fundamentally different approach to anesthesia. Rather than relying on a single powerful agent like ether, today’s anesthesiologists combine several drugs, each handling a specific job: one for unconsciousness, another for pain, another for muscle relaxation, and so on. This “balanced anesthesia” approach minimizes side effects while keeping patients safe.
The inhaled anesthetics used today are halogenated ethers, chemical cousins of diethyl ether that have been engineered to be nonflammable. Sevoflurane, one of the most widely used, dissolves poorly in blood (a good thing), which means it takes effect quickly and wears off fast. Patients wake up and return to normal activity sooner than with older agents. It also causes minimal airway irritation, making it gentle enough for mask induction in children. Isoflurane, another common choice, is slightly slower to take effect but similarly safe. With these agents, the rate of postoperative nausea and vomiting has dropped from ether’s 60% to around 30%.
Ether’s Ongoing Role Outside Medicine
Where ether truly persists is in chemistry. It remains one of the most widely used solvents in both industrial and laboratory settings. Its ability to dissolve a broad range of organic compounds while being easy to remove afterward (it evaporates readily) makes it a staple for chemical extractions and synthesis reactions. Chemists use it to control the outcome of specific reactions, such as steering sugar-based molecules to form the desired shape during drug manufacturing.
Ether also has a practical, low-tech application: starting cold engines. Mixed with petroleum distillates, it serves as a starting fluid for diesel engines in frigid conditions. Its high volatility means it ignites easily in a cold combustion chamber where regular diesel fuel would struggle.
Could Ether Ever Come Back?
In well-equipped hospitals, there is no realistic scenario where ether returns. The flammability risk alone disqualifies it, and newer agents outperform it on every measure that matters to patients: faster onset, quicker recovery, less nausea, no lingering smell. The only context where ether still makes medical sense is the one where alternatives are genuinely unavailable, and even that niche is narrowing as global health infrastructure improves. For the foreseeable future, ether’s legacy lives on mainly in the chemistry lab and in the history of medicine as the substance that proved surgery didn’t have to mean agony.