Editor—It may be of interest to add to Professor Dunn’s Perinatal Lessons from the Past on John Snow.1 He was the first to describe the placental transfer of anaesthetics, when in 1853 he noted the smell of ether on the breath of newborn infants.2

It is ironic that despite espousing temperance causes he is one of only two doctors to have public houses named after them in London (the other being Sir Alexander Fleming).