The persons who first made the bold experiments which resulted in the discovery of how to produce anaesthesia were Americans; and two men were prominently concerned in the discovery. Several others made isolated and successful efforts with both ether and nitrous oxide, but they lacked the confidence and the courage to make their success public and to persist in their experiments. Of these, Dr. Long, of Athens, Georgia, was one of the earliest; he is said to have successfully removed a tumour from a patient under the influence of ether in 1842, and in the Southern States he is regarded as the discoverer of anaesthesia. Dr. Jackson, of Boston--a scientific chemist--laid claim to the honour of the discovery after others had fought the fight and established the practice of anaesthesia. Neither of these men, for the reason already given, deserves the honour which is now universally attributed to their fellow-countrymen, Wells and Morton. Horace Wells was born at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1815, and was educated to the profession of dental surgeon. He gave much attention to the desire present in the minds of many men at that time to render dental operations painless. On December 10, 1844, he witnessed at a popular lecture the experiment of administering laughing-gas, and noticed that a Mr. Cooley, while still under the influence of the gas, struck and injured his limb against a bench without suffering pain. The idea at once occurred to Wells that here was the agent he was in search of, and the very next day he experimented upon himself. If it has ever been fortunate to have toothache it was so for Wells that day; he was troubled by an aching molar which was removed by a colleague named Rigg, whilst he was fully under the influence of nitrous oxide; and thus he began what he himself at once called on recovering consciousness, "a new era in tooth-pulling." He proceeded promptly to test the experiment upon others and with complete success; and then making his success known, he proceeded with his former pupil Morton to Boston, and gave a public demonstration of his method which unfortunately was so imperfectly carried out that he was laughed at for his pains and stigmatised an impostor. Wells himself stated that the failure was due to the premature withdrawal of the bag containing the gas, so that the patient was but partially under its influence when the tooth was extracted. Wells and Morton were ignominiously hissed by the crowd of practitioners and students gathered to see the operation. Wells never recovered from the disappointment and the illness which resulted, and although he was able to explain his discovery to the French Academy of Science in 1846, he unfortunately died insane in New York two years later. Undoubtedly he was the first to discover the practicability of nitrous oxide anaesthesia, and to proclaim the discovery with a discoverer's zeal. Although his career ended so sadly, his efforts had, nevertheless, inspired to greater