on the welfare of the whole of mankind. His pupil and successor, Faraday, in 1818 announced that sulphuric ether vapour, when inhaled, produced similar effects to nitrous oxide. Here closes the record of anæsthetics for many years, practically we believe because medicine and surgery had not yet become sufficiently scientific to discern their value. In 1835 Robert Collyer, an American medical student, inhaled ether at a chemical lecture by Professor Turner at University College, London, being himself made insensible, in company with other students; he noted that his fellow-students under its influence became insensible to pain. In December 1839, Collyer, near New Orleans, reduced a dislocation of the hip for one of his father’s negroes who had fallen down in insensibility on inhaling the fumes of rum. The negro showed no sign of pain. Collyer soon after identified this narcotic state with that produced by mesmerism, under which also some operations were painlessly performed. Collyer lectured on these subjects in 1840 and subsequent years in Philadelphia, Boston, Liverpool, and other places. He made mesmeric and narcotising experiments, the latter with a mixture in which the vapour of alcohol with poppy seeds and coriander steeped in it was inhaled, and in 1842 he states that he administered his alcoholic mixture to a patient in Philadelphia, during tooth-drawing, with a painless result. In 1844 an American chemical lecturer named Coulton exhibited the properties of nitrous oxide at a lecture given at Hartford, Connecticut, at which Horace Wells, a dentist practising there, was present. Having a tooth which he himself wished to get extracted, Wells invited Coulton to administer nitrous oxide to him. This was successfully done, and during Wells’ insensibility his tooth was removed by a friend, Dr. Riggs. Wells on recovering consciousness exclaimed, “A new era in tooth-pulling!” and at once attempted to introduce the practice at Hartford and at Boston; but not using the gas in purity, and not being sufficiently skilful in its administration, his attempts often failed, and at Boston he was hissed, and gave up his efforts in despair. Later, when anæsthetics had become firmly established, he again sought unsuccessfully to introduce nitrous oxide, and at last put an end to his life. It is sad to think of this fate for a man who, with a little more education and a little more perseverance, might have reaped a great harvest of fame.[8]