Eliot's etherized patient after all, but prepared on the banquet table, not the operating table.

You are now inhaling an etherized vapor," he announced, with an ugly chuckle. "

This trend has gradually picked up since the turn of the century, as phrases such as "etherized" and "ethervision" have gained popularity.

In "Three Americanisms," at the SoHo Repertory, he has written a trio of etherized soliloquies circling the subject of justifiable paranoia.

"A most general idea prevails . . . that hospitals are places for experiments," reported Harper's Weekly, which assured its readers that medical students did not just line up for work-study on helpless "etherized" patients.

Under her feet, she could hear the scrape of the gritty glitz, the glitzy grit of post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty; she could see the sparkle and glitter of it spread out before her-not Eliot's etherized patient awaiting dissection but a refulgent feast for her reeling senses.