[Illustration: AN OPERATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY From a painting by Franz Hals] [Sidenote: An operation on the King of Poland] In 1782, Weiss is said to have operated on the foot of Augustus, King of Poland, having previously placed the royal patient under the influence of “a certain potion surreptitiously administered.” Shortly afterwards Sassard, a surgeon of La Charité, in Paris, suggested that patients who were about to be operated upon should be drugged with narcotics as a means of preventing shock. That this method was sometimes practised is evidenced from a chapter in “Bell’s Surgery,” where the author not only refers to it but objects to the method on account of the sickness and vomiting it produced. As late as 1847, Chisholm, of Inverness, recorded his use of a drug given internally to produce anæsthesia for surgical purposes; he substituted the internal use of morphine for ether inhalation in a case of ablation of the breast successfully performed upon a woman, who declared that she felt no pain during the operation. [Sidenote: Anæsthesia by compression of the carotid arteries revived] Other means of producing insensibility were suggested in the eighteenth century, and the antient method of compressing the carotid arteries was revived. This method had been used by Valverdi about 1560, and Morgagni employed it about 1750 in his experiments on animals, and suggested that it might be used on human beings. Compression of the nerves of the limb about to be removed, was also proposed, by James Moore in 1784, and tried by Hunter and others, but the results could not be regarded as successful. [Sidenote: Nelson’s arm amputated] Surgical operations at this time meant periods of agonising pain, and the stoutest hearts often quailed at the prospect. It is said that Lord Nelson was so painfully affected by the coldness of the operator’s knife when his right arm was amputated at Teneriffe, that at the Battle of the Nile he gave orders to his surgeon to have hot water kept ready, so that at the worst he might be operated upon with a warm knife. [Sidenote: The dawn of a new era] Thus from the dawn of creation anæsthesia for surgical operations had been practised to some extent, but, owing to the uncertainty of the potency and action of the powerful narcotics and palliatives administered, and the danger attending their use when exact science was unknown, the practice seemed likely to fall into oblivion. At last a series of brilliant discoveries in chemistry created a new epoch in the history of anæsthesia. THE CHEMICAL ERA OF ANÆSTHETICS [Sidenote: Priestley’s discoveries]