Such is the history of the discovery of the use of anæsthetics. Probably, none has ever added so largely to that part of happiness which consists in the escape from pain. Past all counting is the sum of happiness enjoyed by the millions who, in the last three-and-thirty years, have escaped the pains that were inevitable in surgical operations; pains made more terrible by apprehension, more keen by close attention; sometimes awful in a swift agony, sometimes prolonged beyond even the most patient endurance, and then renewed in memory and terrible in dreams. These will never be felt again. But the value of the discovery is not limited by the abolition of these pains or the pains of childbirth. It would need a long essay to tell how it has enlarged the field of useful surgery, making many things easy that were difficult, many safe that were too perilous, many practicable that were nearly impossible. And, yet more variously, the discovery has brought happiness in the relief of some of the intensest pains of sickness, in quieting convulsion, in helping to the discrimination of obscure diseases. The tale of its utility would not end here; another essay might tell its multiform uses in the study of physiology, reaching even to that of the elemental processes in plants, for these, as Claude Bernard has shown, may be completely for a time suspended in the sleep produced by chloroform or ether. And now, what of the discoverers?[1] What did time bring to those who brought so great happiness to mankind? * * * * *