[The Lance-parfum (perfume-squirter), a medical equipment which became a carnival article]

The perfume-squirter was a glass or metal tube. It contained parfumed ethyl chloride and was very famous as carnival article. Therefore, ethyl chloride in tubes existed before, and was used by surgeons for local anesthetics. The authors study patents to prove this relationship and analyse letters written before the First World War by the Swiss perfumer Givaudan and a French physician, Dr Besançon.