Then, if we exclude the cases in which excitement, instead of collapse, is induced, and, in general, cases complicated with disorder of the head or chest, it appears that the inhalation of ether is not attended with questionable or injurious consequences; and that it places the patient in a condition in which the performance of a surgical operation may be prudently contemplated. If the operation require any length of time,--from thirty to forty minutes, for instance,--the state of insensibility may be safely maintained, by causing the inhalation to be resumed as often as its effects begin to wear off. In minor cases of surgery, in which union of the wound _by adhesion_ is necessary to the success of the operation--in harelip, for instance--an exacter comparison is, perhaps, requisite than has yet been made of the relative results obtained on etherised and non-etherised patients. In graver cases, some of which always end fatally, symptoms, again, may occasionally supervene, or continue from the time of the operation, which are directly attributable to the etherisation. But, in all probability, the entire proportion of recoveries in etherised cases will be found to be increased, through the injurious effects being averted which are produced by fear and suffering. There is every reason to expect that a saving of human life will be thus realised,--an advantage over and above the deliverance from pain and terror. So the invention of etherisation deserves to be rated as a signal benefit to humanity. Nor is it to be lost sight of, that the invention is quite in its infancy; and that any sound objections which may, at present, be raised against it, are not unlikely to be obviated through the modifications and improvements of which it is no doubt susceptible. The amount of success already obtained, may further be deemed sufficient to make us secure that the object of extinguishing the sufferings of surgery will never _again_ be lost sight of by the medical profession and the public. One item, partial indeed, but a tolerably severe one, in the catalogue of the physical ills to which flesh is heir, is thus so far in a fair way of being got rid of. The method of Mesmer was an attempt to cure bodily disease by making a forcible impression on the nerves. And no doubt can be entertained that many of his patients were the better for the violent succussion of the system which his developed practice put them through.