Inventions in the field of medicine consist chiefly in those innumerable compositions and compounds which have resulted from chemical discoveries. Gelatine capsules used to conceal unpalatable remedies may be mentioned as a most acceptable modern invention in this class. Inventions and discoveries in the field of surgery relate not only to instrumentalities but processes. The antiseptic treatment of wounds, by which the long and exhausting suppuration is avoided, is among the most notable of the latter. In instruments vast improvements have been made; special forms adapted for operation in every form of injury; in syringes, especially hypodermic, those used for subcutaneous injections of liquid remedies; inhalers for applying medicated vapours and devices for applying volatile anaesthetics, and devices for atomising and spraying liquids. In the United States alone about four thousand patents have been granted for inventions in surgical instruments. _Dentistry._--This art has been revolutionised during the century. Even in the time of Herodotus, one special set of physicians had the treatment of teeth; and artificial teeth have been known and used for many ages, but all seems crude and barbarous until these later days. In addition to the use of anaesthetics, improvements have been made in nearly every form of dental instruments, such as forceps, dental engines, pluggers, drills, hammers, etc., and in the means and materials for making teeth. Later leading inventions have reference to utilising the roots of destroyed teeth as supports on which to form bridges to which artificial teeth are secured, and to crowns for decayed teeth that still have a solid base. There exists no longer the dread of the dentist’s chair unless the patient has neglected too long the visit. Pain cannot be all avoided, but it is ameliorated; and the new results in workmanship in the saving and in the making of teeth are vast improvements over the former methods. CHAPTER VII. STEAM AND STEAM ENGINES. “Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or in wide waving wings expanded bear The flying chariot through the field of air.” Thus sang the poet prophet, the good Dr. Darwin of Lichfield, in the eighteenth century. Newcomen and Watt had not then demonstrated that steam was not unconquerable, but the hitching it to the slow barge and the rapid car was yet to come. It has come, and although the prophecy is yet to be rounded into fulfilment by the driving of the “flying chariot through the field of air,” that too is to come. The prophecy of the doctor poet was as suggestive of the practical means of carrying it into effect as were all the means proposed during the first seventeen centuries of the Christian Era for conquering steam and harnessing it as a useful servant to man.