Partly owing to his own enthusiasm and his strong belief in the superiority of chloroform over ether, and partly owing to the confusion prevailing in general circles as to the history of anaesthesia, no small number of attacks were directed against Simpson personally by those who either were jealous of his achievements, or who considered that the part taken by themselves or their friends in the establishment of this new era in medical science had been slighted or overlooked. Simpson took all these as part of the fight into which he had entered. His nature was not sensitive to such personal attacks; he replied to them, cast them off, and went on his way unaffected. He handled some of these opponents somewhat severely when they accused him of encouraging the public belief in him as the discoverer of anaesthesia. It is clear to us to-day after anaesthesia has been on its trial for fifty years that Simpson magnified the superiority of chloroform over ether, and was led by that feeling to look on the history of ether as but a stage in the history of the greater chloroform. He regarded chloroform as the only anaesthetic; his utterances betrayed this feeling, and offence was naturally taken by the introducers and advocates of ether. His opinion of chloroform was shared by the leading European surgeons to such an extent in his day that shortly after his death Professor Gusserow, of Berlin, stated that with a few exceptions almost all over the earth nothing else was used to produce anaesthesia but chloroform. The real fight for anaesthesia was against those who found in the practice something which ran contrary to their beliefs or principles. There were first those who objected on purely _medical_ grounds; secondly, those who took exception to it from a _moral_ point of view; and thirdly, those who found their _religious_ convictions seriously offended by the new practice.