Dr. James Arnott has lately been investigating this subject in a very persevering manner. During the last three or four years, all the cases of amputation performed in the London hospitals have been reported in the _Medical Times and Gazette_, together with their results; and Dr. James Arnott has stated that the average per centage of deaths, after the three kinds of amputation above mentioned, is 34·4 per cent. There is obviously no means of ascertaining what was the mortality after amputations in the hospitals of London before the use of ether and chloroform, but Dr. James Arnott brings forward four papers, which state the mortality for a short period, in four hospitals, a little time before the introduction of etherization. The number of cases in these papers is 174, and the number of deaths 41. Dr. James Arnott states the per centage of deaths to be 21·9,[142] although it appears to me that it would be 23·5; and it may be remarked that the four papers from which these numbers are taken might probably not have been published if the numbers they contain had not been favourable. Dr. James Arnott, in a second table, gives the number of amputations and deaths from the several hospitals in London which are named. The cases are said to have occurred “during eighteen months from June 1855 to June 1856, inclusive;” here being obviously a mistake. The number of cases is 204, and the number of deaths 61; which would give a mortality of 29·9 per cent.; almost exactly the same as that which Dr. Simpson had obtained from thirty provincial hospitals before the use of ether. The numbers in Dr. Simpson’s table are 618 cases, and 183 deaths, or 29·6 per cent. Dr. James Arnott does not, however, mention the per centage of deaths in his second table, but gives another table, for a different period, in which the names of the hospital are not given. The numbers he gives in this table are 430 cases and 148 deaths, giving a mortality of 34·4 per cent. Dr. James Arnott therefore concludes that chloroform causes the death of upwards of 12 per cent. of those who inhale it for the purpose of undergoing amputation. It is evident that he can have had no experience of the effects of chloroform, or he would have perceived at once the error of his conclusions, for this agent is given for a much longer time than in amputations, in numerous operations of which the entire mortality is less than 12 per cent. In the removal of tumours of the female breast, for instance, more chloroform is generally administered than in an amputation, and the loss of blood is also much greater, yet the entire mortality after this operation is considerably less than that which Dr. J. Arnott supposes that chloroform adds to the ordinary mortality after amputations.