To the Editor: —I was greatly surprised to read in Queries and Minor Notes (The Journal, July 28, p. 320) that the accepted mortality rate from nitrous oxid is about 1 death in 1,000,000 anesthesias. In the New York Medical Record , July 29, 1916, I reported fourteen nitrous oxid deaths that had occurred in Columbus alone, with full details of each death. Gwathmey, in his review on anesthesia in the New York Medical Journal , Oct. 28 and Nov. 4, 1916, states that gas should never be used alone, as it is unsafe for even short operations. The same writer in the Annals of Surgery , August, 1921, in writing of nitrous oxid-oxygen, states that the advocates of this anesthetic agent probably responsible for more deaths than are the advocates of any one anesthetic or single method. Since the communication to the Medical Record , nitrous oxid-oxygen has been little used as