despairingly inquired if Mesmerism was not available in such ordeals. Here, then, was the long wished for opportunity, and complete unconsciousness crowned the experiment with success. It is quite probable that the world will not remember who this individual was, and yet it is true that the whole discovery of which we are now speaking exhibited its first authentic effort when it annulled the pain accompanying the lesion of the little nerve that animated his defective molar.

It is worth while here to ask, What was the position of the discovery at this time? A tooth had been painlessly drawn, and at a previous time an irritation of the pulmonary air tubes had been alleviated, with alleged insensibility, by the inhalation of a subtile vapor. Here were two facts, insufficient for the most hasty generalization, circumscribed in their purport, showing, not that every person could be affected in a similar manner, bearing not upon vitality at large, but only upon two specimens of it as modified in these two individuals, and proving, at the most, that animal vitality could be thus affected in two instances, and not that it could be so in all instances. Besides this, the wholly different question of danger was not yet touched by evidence. If these two cases showed that insensibility could be thus effected without danger, two or three previous cases showed, with equal clearness, that insensibility produced death. Knowledge, at this point, rested upon a few hypothetical facts. I confess, had I been then asked what inference I considered safe, I should have replied, "You have succeeded in two instances only; and, in view of the previous evidence upon this subject, it is quite likely that, in two more instances, either you will fail to produce insensibility, or, having produced it, your patients will die." This seems to me the necessary logical conclusion from previous evidence; and that this was the first conclusion of those who had

knowledge in such matters will be well remembered by many. I cite only the opinion of a distinguished chemist in a neighboring city, who, after one or two facts of insensibility, counselled his son not to risk his health upon it. Also a letter from Sir Benjamin Brodie, one of the distinguished experimenters in physiology of twenty years ago, who, in full view of all the facts that were borne across the Atlantic at the first announcement of the discovery, and after reflection, still wrote to Dr. Chambers: "I had heard of this before. The narcotic properties of inhaled ether have been long known, and I have tried it on guinea pigs, whom it first set asleep and then killed. One question is, whether it can be used with safety."

This was indeed a great question to be decided. Another was, Can insensibility be produced in all cases? Let these inquiries be answered affirmatively, and the surgeon would be justified in multiplying his experiments, while the value of the discovery would be infinitely enhanced.

To settle these important questions many instances of insensibility were needed, which were not long in offering themselves to the tenant of a largely frequented dental establishment. Each new trial added evidence in geometrical proportion, while the absence of serious mishap encouraged hope.

I consider a second point in the discovery to have been now pretty well established. This was, not that ether might produce insensibility during the extraction of a tooth, and that the state of somnolence might be unattended with danger, but that it could always produce insensibility, and that the danger was comparatively slight.

Brief inhalation may be considered as fairly tested, and the discovery fairly demonstrated, in this rapid and multiplied experience.

Analogy, the degree of insensibility, and its superficial

extent, rendered it quite probable that such insensibility would prove complete and universal An experimentum crucis could alone determine such a point, nor was it long delayed.

The gentleman who had conducted these experiments determined upon submitting the new phenomena to the test of a surgical operation; and there was a certain liberality of spirit which was instrumental in introducing the discovery into the Massachusetts General Hospital. Many such pretended discoveries had failed. To be a party to such public failure was to invite an imputation of lack of judgment; and although this novelty presented peculiar and unequivocal evidence, and possessed an intrinsic worth which need have regarded no opposition, yet a spirit of liberality and of discernment is to be recognized in the attitude of Dr. Warren, who assumed the responsibility of failure, and of the danger that might well seem possible to one who had not witnessed the previous experiments. Ether has not always met with equal consideration.

The operation of that day was incomplete in its results, for reasons to be hereafter indicated. A young man offered signs of sensibility during and after a dissection which was not particularly painful. Some powerful drug already known, or even the imagination, might well have been suspected of agency in the phenomena.

On the ensuing day, a woman offered herself with a tumor of considerable magnitude on the right shoulder. A few minutes of the most complete and passive insensibility served for its extirpation. No imagination was here to be accused. The drooping lid, the head fallen on the shoulder, the stolid relaxation of the mouth, suggested no overworking of the intellect, no rapt unconsciousness, no inspired ecstasy. The phenomena were real, familiar to daily experience; they belonged to the profoundest sleep. This operation of

Dr. Hayward first showed conclusively the power of the new agent in averting the terrors of the surgical art. The casual spectator would have remarked no expression of wonder nor unusual excitement in the bystanders at the working of this miracle. Nothing to awe or startle marred the tranquillity of the operating-room. Yet I think those present will not soon forget the conviction of those few moments, associated at this remote day with the breathless silence of the crowd, and the unwonted fumes of aromatics burned to mask the emanations from the yet mysterious agent. Cognizant of these facts, and having studied the phenomena of etherization in a number of successive experiments at the dental establishment before alluded to, I felt that there was no longer any hazard in vouching for the efficacy of ether; and on the 3d of November I read a memoir upon the subject before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The case of Alice Mohan, whose limb was successfully amputated by Dr. Hayward under the new influence, occurring soon after, I incorporated this confirmatory evidence into a second paper read before the Medical Improvement Society of this city. This paper, afterwards published in this Journal, was the first upon the subject, and was, I believe, that which carried the news to the South and across the Atlantic.

It has been well said that the first attitude of the world towards a great discovery is incredulity, and then hostility; and this was well exemplified in the reception of this announcement at the South. Three weeks elapsed before any notice of the subject appeared. Then came the doubts. of those sagacious and experienced philosophers who were not easily to be deceived.

In January, 1847, a New York medical journal announced that "the last special wonder has already arrived at the natural term of its existence. It has descended to the bottom of that great abyss which has already engulfed so

many of its predecessor novelties, but which continues, alas, to gape until a humbug yet more prime shall be thrown. into it."

The New Orleans Medical Journal says, in the same month, "That the leading surgeons of Boston could be captivated by such an invention as this excites our amazement." "Why, Mesmerism, which is repudiated by the savans of Boston, has done a thousand times greater wonders."

"We

A leading medical periodical in Philadelphia, says: should not consider it entitled to the least notice, but that we perceive, by a Boston journal, that prominent members of the profession have been caught in its meshes." It was "fully persuaded that the surgeons of Philadelphia would not be seduced from the high professional path of duty into the quagmire of quackery by this will o' the wisp." What the surgeons of Philadelphia have considered the "high professional path of duty," up to a very recent date, I shall soon show.

It is fair to state, that at the West, in Chicago, Buffalo, and St. Louis, the discovery received candid consideration.

The great show of dissatisfaction, emanating from those who were not contented to receive tranquilly this great discovery, and to recognize it as such, was directed against the patent right connected with its early history; but so soon as the discovery received the confirmation of European testimony, it was providentially discovered that the patent was probably invalid, and hesitation and opposition rapidly subsided, although for some weeks the enthusiasm of periodical medical literature was tempered by the character of the reports which reached us from the other side of the Atlantic.

The article before alluded to was, I believe, the first published in the European journals. The discovery, then, rested in Europe upon the identical evidence which intro