Braid, who made a further investigation of the subject, dissented from the mesmerists as to the cause of the phenomenon, and called the condition “hypnotism.” In 1846, the Deputy-Governor of Bengal appointed a committee to observe and report on the surgical operations that were then being performed in India by Esdaile upon his patients, while under the influence of alleged mesmeric agency. The Committee reported on various experiments carried out under their observation, some of which had apparently been performed with great success. But from further investigation it was apparent that the method was uncertain, and success seemed to be due to the peculiar susceptibility of the patient operated upon. These experiments are worth recording, as they indirectly led to the practice of administering certain vapours to produce anæsthesia. [Sidenote: Robert Collier one of the first pioneers] One of the pioneers in the practice of inhalation was Robert H. Collier, who was a believer in mesmerism. In 1835 he was present at a lecture given by Dr. Turner, Professor of Chemistry at University College, London, and in the course of some experiments in the inhalation of ether was himself rendered unconscious, and also observed that his fellow-students who had inhaled it were insensible to pain. Four years later he went to America, and, while visiting his father’s estate near New Orleans, he was called to one of the negroes who had become insensible by inhaling fumes from a vat of rum, and who, in falling, had dislocated his hip. Finding the muscles flaccid, Collier reduced the dislocation without exciting the least sensation of pain in the patient. A little later he performed two operations upon patients while under mesmeric influence, with apparent success. These facts led him to connect the phenomenon of mesmerism with narcotism produced by inhalation, and in 1840 he commenced a lecturing tour throughout America on the subject. Three years later he returned to this country, and at Liverpool, where he landed, gave his first lecture, which he illustrated by experiments in mesmerism, and also showed the possibility of rendering a subject unconscious by the fumes of alcohol in which poppy-heads and coriander had been macerated. The theory he advanced, and attempted to prove throughout, was that the so-called mesmeric influence was identical in action with that of narcotic vapours. [Sidenote: Uses his alcoholic mixture as an anæsthetic in 1842]