In operative surgery the art is not less available. In trance the patient is insensible, and a limb may be removed without the operation exciting disturbance of any kind. And what is equally important, in all the after-treatment, at every dressing, the process of mesmerizing may be resorted to again, with no possible disadvantage, but being rather soothing and useful to the patient, independently of the extinction of the dread and suffering of pain. The first instance in which an operation was performed on a patient in this state was the celebrated case of Madame Plantin. It occurred twenty years ago. The lady was sixty-four years of age, and laboured under scirrhus of the breast. She was prepared for the operation by M. Chapélain, who on several successive days threw her into trance by the ordinary mesmeric manipulations. She was _then_ like an ordinary sleep-walker, and would converse with indifference about the contemplated operation, the idea of which, when she was in her natural state, filled her with terror. The operation of removing the diseased breast was performed at Paris on the 12th of April, 1829, by M. Jules Cloquet; it lasted from ten to twelve minutes. During the whole of this time the patient, _in her trance_, conversed calmly with M. Cloquet, and exhibited not the slightest sign of suffering. Her expression of countenance did not change; nor was the voice, the breathing, or the pulse at all affected. After the wound was dressed, the patient was awakened from the trance, when on learning that the operation was over, and seeing her children round her, Madame Plantin was affected with considerable emotion, whereupon M. Chapélain, to compose her, put her back into the state of trance. I copy the above particulars from Dr. Foissac’s _Rapports et Discussions de l’Académie Royale de Médecine sur le Magnetism Animal_.—Paris, 1833. My friend, Dr. Warren, of Boston, informed me that, being at Paris, he had asked M. Jules Cloquet if the story were true. M. Cloquet answered, “Perfectly.” “Then why,” said Dr. Warren, “have you not repeated the practice?” M. Cloquet replied “that he had not dared; that the prejudice against mesmerism was so strong at Paris that he probably would have lost his reputation and his income by so doing.”