those to whom we are indebted for it. From
very early times substances have now and
then been used to produce sleep and a state
of insensibility to pain during operations.
Dioscorides and Pliny state that mandrake-root
was used by the ancients for that purpose.
Augustus II. of Poland was put to
sleep by the use of some secret agent, in order
that he might the better bear a painful operation,
probably upon his foot. It was suggested
by Sir Humphrey Davey that the
inhalation of nitrous oxide might be used for
the destruction of pain during surgical operations.
In 1832, a M. Dauriol had operated
upon persons made insensible by the use of
ether containing sedative substances, hemlock,
henbane or stramony. In the spring
of 1844, Dr. Smilie operated after the use of
ether combined with tincture of opium, but
laid aside the practice through fear of
injurious consequences. In the same year,
1844, Mr. Horace Wells, of Connecticut,
revived Sir Humphrey Davey's notion of the
use of nitrous oxide, and applied it to the
extraction of a tooth. It is to be observed,
however, that nitrous oxide is by no means a
good anaesthetic agent. Mr. Wells says:
"Being a resident of Hartford, Connecticut,
I proceeded to Boston in December of the
same year, in order to present my discovery
to the medical faculty." He made known
his idea, he says, to Drs. Jackson and Morton,
and applying before his experiment to Dr.
Jackson for some gas, received from Dr.
Jackson, not nitrous oxide gas, but ether. In
the meantime, Dr. Morton had tried the effects
of ether on himself, and on the 30th September
1846, extracted a tooth from a person
placed under its influence. Afterwards, at
the suggestion of the same gentleman, an arm
was amputated under the same circumstances
at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

The discovery was communicated to
England in a letter from Dr. Bigelow of
Boston to Dr. Booth of London, bearing date
November 28, 1846. On the nineteenth of
the succeeding month, ether was used by
Mr. Robinson in the extracton of a tooth,
and on the twenty-first of the same month it
was first used by Mr. Liston in two more
serious cases—the amputation of a thigh, and
the extraction of a toe-nail.

The use of ether became general; the
instrument-makers tried to strike out a new
branch of business (as in such cases they
always do) by inventing elaborate, troublesome,
and costly machines, full of pipes and
stopcocks; none of which were half so well
adapted to the purpose of inhalation as a
simple pocket-handkerchief or piece of sponge.

Under an indiscriminate use of ether,
several deaths followed: not many months
had elapsed before there were nine cases on
record of death from the effects of ether, so
applied by the surgeon, without reckoning
two or three accidents. A reaction began to
set in; some gave up on the use of the new agent;
others attempted to discover the substances
that should be as efficient and less dangerous.
Many substances were found to be more or
less available (all containing carbon), but
none were capable of superseding ether until
Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh, in November,
1847, published the merits of Chloroform to
the profession. Experiments had been made
with that substance by M. Flourens, the
French physiologist, upon animals in the
preceding March; but Professor Simpson
stands alone as the establisher of Chloroform
in the position which it now holds in the
medical profession. Its use spread rapidly;
no doubt the more rapidly, because Dr. Simpson
taught that it should be applied upon a
handkerchief without the use of any apparatus,
and his invention was, therefore,
spared the heavy clog which had been attached
to the use of ether by the instrument makers.
Ether as little required machinery of brass
and glass as Chloroform; but people fancied
that it did. Chloroform was, therefore, at
once highly recommended by the ease with
which it was to be administered.

The death of Hannah Greener at Newcastle,
who had been in great fear of Chloroform,
and died in two minutes after its use, first
impressed people with the idea that even
Chloroform was not to be respired without
great precaution. Accidents were however
few, and instances of striking benefit
almost innumerable: the use of Chloroform
spread therefore over Europe, and in the five
and a half years that have elapsed since its
introduction, the whole number of cases in
which it has produced death does not amount
to more than fifty, while the number of cases
in which life has been saved, by sparing to
the system of a sick person the shock often
attendant upon a painful operation, are to be
numbered certainly by thousands.

This we are now able to prove by tables
furnished during the last five years from
private and hospital experience. A few
figures, however, will suffice. The deaths
after great amputations of the ordinary kind
(not painless), calculated for the half-century,
were found in the tables collected by Mr.
Phillips, relating to hospital and private
practice, to be thirty-five per cent. In Dr.
Simpson's estimate, calculated from hospitals
alone, they were twenty-nine per cent. The
per centage, computed from all cases in which
an anaesthetic agent had been used, was found
to be reduced to twenty-three. After amputations
of the thigh the deaths used to be in
Paris, according to Malgaigne, sixty-nine in
a hundred; in the Edinburgh Infirmary,
according to Peacock, forty-nine per cent.; in
all practice, according to the general tables of
Phillips, forty-four in a hundred; at Glasgow,
according to Laurie, thirty-six; in all English
and Scottish hospitals, according to Simpson,
thirty-eight, while by the use of painless
operations, the per centage of mortality has
been reduced to twenty-five.