The effect of chloroform cannot fail to be favourable, to a certain extent, in large operations. The patient is in a more tranquil and cheerful condition after the operation, than he would be in if he had suffered the pain of it. His pulse is usually of the natural frequency; and after an amputation, there is generally an entire absence of the starting of the stump, which was formerly so distressing. After all the minor operations in which chloroform is used, and which according to my experience comprise at least one-half of the cases, there is never a death; and the only inconvenience is a troublesome sickness of stomach in a very few instances. Moreover, when patients die after the more formidable operations, they succumb to causes which are well known, and were in operation before the practice of anæsthesia. I only know of a very few instances where there has been a reasonable doubt on the mind of the surgeon, whether the chloroform may not have had some share in preventing the recovery of the patient, after a severe operation. These were cases in which the sickness, which occasionally follows chloroform, continued for three or four days, indeed till the death of the patient. This is a point which it would be difficult to decide, for the latter part of the sickness might depend on the sinking state of the patient, and might have come on if chloroform had not been used. Moreover, as sickness is seldom very prolonged after chloroform in minor operations, except in persons who are not in a good state of health, it is most probable, that the patients who died after a great operation with continued sickness, would not have done well if no chloroform had been used. Some attempts have been made to determine, by statistical inquiry, whether the result of operations has been more favourable since the introduction of anæsthesia. These attempts have been confined to the larger amputations, as they are the only operations which sufficiently resemble each other to admit of the application of statistical inquiry; and even in the case of these operations, the inquiries which had been made previously to the introduction of etherization differed widely in their results.