It sometimes happens, at an operation, that the patient moves. Mostly, this movement is at the moment of the first incision through the skin; but it may be at some later period during the operation. He does not remember, after the operation, that he moved, or that he felt anything. That is incomplete anæsthesia, or light anæsthesia. The corneal reflex may be abolished, and still the patient may move. Seven years ago some experiments were made in this country by an American surgeon. In the published account of them, it was said that one of the animals was, at one time, under incomplete anæsthesia, and that, in the case of another animal, the anæsthesia was at one time overlooked. This latter phrase meant not that the anæsthetic had been left off, but that it had been given in excess, so that the blood-pressure suddenly fell. The character of the experiments, and the occurrence of these two phrases about the anæsthesia, roused some criticism, and the Home Office instituted an inquiry into the matter. "That inquiry," it said, October 11th, 1899, "resulted in showing no evidence whatever that the animals experimented on by Dr. Crile felt pain. On the contrary, all the evidence shows they did not." The Act does not go into questions of corneal reflex, and unconscious muscular movements, and all the undefinable shades between incomplete anæsthesia and complete anæsthesia and profound anæsthesia. "The only substantial question," says the Home Office, "is whether or no the animal has been during the operation under the influence of an anæsthetic of sufficient power to prevent it feeling pain. This is the requirement of the law." We cannot refuse to call morphia and chloral anæsthetics, for there are deaths every year from an over-dose of them. And we cannot admit that an animal under an anæsthetic, because it makes a movement, is in pain or is conscious; for we know that a patient under operation may move yet feel nothing. Every hospital surgeon, and every anæsthetist, who has seen a whole legion of patients go under chloroform or ether and come out of it, and everybody who has been under these anæsthetics, they all know that incomplete anæsthesia is not "sham anæsthesia," and that movements, even purposive movements, may occur without consciousness, without pain, alike in men and in animals. ONE ANIMAL AND ONE EXPERIMENT