des milliers de blessés n’a causé le moindre accident sérieux;” and, more recently, Surgeon–Major M. Armand has written: “During the Italian war, chloroform was as extensively used and was as harmless as in the Crimea. I never heard of an accident from its use.” At the commencement of the Crimean war, the Inspector–General at the head of the British Medical Department circulated a memorandum “cautioning medical officers against the use of chloroform in the severe shock of serious gunshot wounds, as he thinks few will survive where it is used;” but as far as chloroform was available, it was used by many medical officers from the commencement of the campaign, and its employment became more general as the campaign advanced. It was constantly used in the division to which the writer belonged throughout the war; and no harm was ever met with from its use, while certain advantages appeared especially to fit it for military surgical practice. So far from adding to the shock of such cases as an army surgeon would select for operation, the use of chloroform seemed to support the patient during the ordeal; and the writer has several times seen soldiers, within a brief period after amputation for extensive gunshot wounds, and restoration to consciousness, calmly subside into natural and refreshing sleep. One reason for not using chloroform in the Inspector–General’s caution was, that the smart of the knife is a powerful stimulant; but “pain,” it has been remarked by a great surgeon, “when amounting to a certain degree of intensity and duration, is itself destructive;” and there can be little doubt that the acute pain of surgical operations, superadded to the pain which has been endured in consequence of severe gunshot fractures, has often, where chloroform has not been used, intensified the shock, and led to fatal results. In civil surgery, statistical evidence has demonstrated that the mortality after surgical operations has lessened since the use of chloroform; and it is believed the same result would be shown, if opportunity existed, in army practice. In the report of a case in the Crimea, instancing, perhaps, the greatest complication of injuries from gunshot of any which recovered, Dr. Macleod remarks casually in his Notes, p. 265: “This amputation was of course done under chloroform, otherwise it is questionable whether the operation could have been performed at all, the patient was so much depressed.” Mr. Guthrie, in the Addenda to his Commentaries, remarked, from the reports and cases which had reached him, that chloroform had been administered in all the divisions of the army save the second, and had been generally approved; and that the evidence was sufficient to authorize surgeons to administer it even in such wounds as those requiring amputation at the hip–joint. The late Director–General amputated in three instances at the hip–joint, after the battle of the Alma, under chloroform—two