from pressing on his fractured leg. He
seemed distressed if any one walked across
the floor, as if the slightest motion pained
him; but was perfectly ready to divulge
the nature of his accident, when he saw
there was no intention of disturbing his
disabled limb. He had suffered a compound
fracture of the leg, by a loaded wagon passing
over it, and had been carried to the nearest
police station. The pain was so intense when
he was lifted a second time to be taken to the
hospital, that he would have surely fainted
outright, had not a dose of chloroform been
administered to him, and enabled him to be
borne safely and insensibly to the hospital.
"There was some fear," he remarked, "in
the minds of the doctors that they might yet
have to make him a one-legged pensioner;"
but he was ready to submit to the necessary
operation, on condition that the dose of day
before yesterday should be repeated.

To a third patient chloroform had been
given, to produce unconsciousness during the
painful and periodical dressing of an
extensive burn; and to a fourth, during the
application of a powerful caustic.

Since the employment of chloroform, as
many lives have been saved by immunity
from the effects of anxious expectation, as
from relief from actual pain. It is, moreover,
no mean achievement, to spare the subjects of
these terrible calamities the mere recollection
of what was once endured; not alone to
secure the painlessness, but even the
unconsciousness of what then occurred. Those
only who have encountered such a torture
can tell with what horror each incident is
recalled, and how willingly they would be
free from the very remembrance of it.

But the benefits of chloroform are not
confined solely to the patient; they extend to
the medical practitioner. While it saves one
the suffering, it spares the other the pain of
inflicting it. Few operators have become so
hardened by education and custom, as to be
heedless of the agony and regardless of the
shriek of pain. Cheselden, one of the most
successful operators of his day, felt sick, before
an operation, at the thought of the pain he
was about to inflict; although, during its
performance his coolness never forsook him.
Such experience is shared by many surgeons;
who, less gifted than Cheselden, control their
emotions less, and consequently endanger
their patients more. Possessed of the means
of abrogating the pain, the compunction
about inflicting it of course vanishes, and the
surgeon is more equal to his responsibility.

Another example of the assistance chloroform
renders to the surgeon may be instanced,
in the reduction of dislocations. Formerly, in
dislocations of the hip and shoulder, if much
time had elapsed since the accident, not only
had several strong men, with cords and pulleys,
to take part in the operation, but the patient
had to be weakened by bleeding, warm baths,
and tartar emetic, to overcome the resistance
of the antagonistic muscles. Now, a full dose
of chloroform produces the necessary relaxation,
and the surgeon seldom needs more
than a single assistant to do all that is required.
Tender age, again, offers no impediment to
its administration. It has been given
with impunity to the youngest children, and
for hours continuously. One remarkable
case is recorded: an infant, a month old,
being seized with convulsions, and all other
remedies having been applied ineffectually,
chloroform, as a last resort, was administered,
and, the fit returning as the effect of
the drug passed off, the inhalation was kept
up for twenty-four hours continuously; no
less than ten fluid ounces having been
expended. The result of the treatment was,
that, at last, the convulsion was subdued, and
the child made a perfect recovery.

Lastly, we read that chloroform has proved
valuable in detecting cases of imposture
practised by prisoners and mendicants.
Pretended paralysis and contractions of the
limbs at once vanish under its potent influence;
and, not long ago, a continental doctor employed
it successfully to expose the deceptions
of a pretended mute. The impostor had
intended to quarter himself upon one of the
cantonal hospitals; but, under chloroform,
unluckily betrayed his power of speech in an
involuntary, and not very gentle manner.

The history of the introduction of anæsthesia,
as that condition is termed in which
the body is rendered insensible to pain, is
very interesting. It would seem that the
idea of annulling the pain of operations is
really one of great antiquity. The ancient
Greeks and Romans endeavoured to effect
this by the administration of mandragora, a
herb of the nightshade family; opium and
other narcotics were similarly employed;
and there is evidence that the Chinese, more
than two thousand years ago, used Indian
hemp for a like purpose. Middleton, in his
tragedy of Women beware of Women, pub-
lished in sixteen hundred and fifty-seven,
alluding to this, says:

"I'll imitate the pities of old surgeons
  To this lost limb: who, ere they show their art,
  Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased part."

During the last and present centuries,
various imperfect attempts were made to
supersede pain; but the results, being
unsatisfactory, were not pursued to their
legitimate conclusions. The birth of the
modern practice of anæsthesia really dates
no further back than the year eighteen hundred
and forty-six. Mr. Morton, practising
as a dentist in Boston, United States, then
hit upon the plan of producing unconsciousness
by the inhalation of the vapour of sulphuric
ether, which he dignified by the name
of Letheon, intending to reserve his discovery
for his own benefit. The secret was soon
divulged, however, and the Letheon was
speedily employed in graver operations than