rectum, performed before breakfast, and after a brisk purgative had been taken the previous night. It might be advisable, where persons in a state of debility have taken a purgative, to make an exception to the usual rule of prohibiting the breakfast, and to risk the inconvenience of vomiting rather than the more formidable symptoms of faintness from inanition. The faintness which now and then follows an operation under chloroform should be treated on ordinary principles, as the horizontal posture, the application of the vapour of ammonia to the nostrils, and the exhibition of brandy or wine, if the other measures do not suffice. I never give ammonia internally where a patient is sick or faint, but the spirit of sal volatile, when at hand, serves very well to pour on the corner of a towel and apply to the nostrils. _Hysteria._ I have already stated (p. 51) that chloroform occasionally excites hysteria in those who are subject to that complaint; and that, in a few cases, the hysteria, which has been subdued by the chloroform, reappears as the effects of the vapour subside. It is nearly always in the female sex that one meets with these phenomena, although I have two or three times seen hysterical symptoms in the male for half an hour or so after the inhalation. The hysteria commonly takes the form of laughing or crying, but the patient sometimes remains quiet, and simply in an unconscious state. The hysterical symptoms usually pass off spontaneously, in half an hour or less, without any remedies; if they last longer, the ordinary remedies for hysteria may be applied. I am not aware that the hysteria has lasted longer than three or four hours in any of the cases in which I have administered chloroform, but it may have done so without my being informed of the circumstance. I was informed of the case of a young woman in King’s College Hospital, who remained unconscious, or at least apparently so, for three days after chloroform had been administered for an operation, the nature of which I have forgotten. She recovered without ill effects. When the patient does not wake spontaneously, and cannot be roused to the waking state, within twenty minutes or half an hour after the inhalation of chloroform has been left off, we may rest assured that the patient is affected with hysteria—at least this has been the case in every instance with which I have become acquainted. The physical properties of this agent do not permit it to remain long in the system, if the circulation and respiration are going on properly, and this circumstance ought to prevent unnecessary alarm, in the absence of other symptoms except the state of unconsciousness. I have, however, known great alarm to exist where the properties of chloroform were not well understood. Soon after its introduction, a medical man administered it to a young woman in domestic service, for the extraction of a tooth. He became alarmed, in the first instance, from the impression that he had given an overdose.