exhibiting an abnormal exhilaration. Dr. Horace Wells, a dentist of Hartford, Conn., in 1844, had the gas administered, experimentally, to himself during the operation of extracting a tooth, and was the discoverer of its useful application as an anæsthetic. The greatest discovery, however, in anæsthetics is the application of ether for this purpose. Ether as a chemical product has been known for several centuries, and as early as 1818 Faraday pointed out the similarity between the effects of ether and nitrous oxide gas. Dr. Morton, a dentist, of Boston, first applied it as an anæsthetic Oct. 16, 1846, being guided largely in its selection and use by Dr. Jackson, an eminent chemist of the same city. On Nov. 12, 1846, U. S. Pat. No. 4,848 was issued to them for this invention. In the latter part of December of the same year Dr. Liston, an eminent English surgeon, performed the operation of amputating the thigh while the patient was under the influence of ether. Chloroform, discovered by Guthrie in 1831, was first applied as an anæsthetic by Sir James Y. Simpson, of Edinburgh, in 1847. Of the two leading anæsthetics, ether is more generally used in the United Sates and chloroform in Europe. Ether is less dangerous, but its administration is more difficult and disagreeable. It is said on the highest authority that in the Crimean War chloroform was administered 25,000 times without a single death, and ether is even safer than chloroform. In the hands of a skillful physician practically no danger is to be apprehended from the use of either of the two agents. A little over fifty years ago any severe or prolonged surgical operation involved such irresistible pain that the patient’s writhings were required to be restrained by powerful muscular assistants, and by straps which bound the patient to the table, and when it is remembered that a false cut of a hundredth part of an inch might be fatal, the haste, the disquieting influence upon the surgeon, and the interference with the accuracy of his hand, added greatly to the percentage of unsuccessful operations, as well as to the prolonged agony of the patient. Contrast this with the present methods of using anæsthetics, and we find the patient dropping into a quiet and peaceful sleep before the operation, and awakening thereafter to find, to his astonishment, that it is all over, and that recovery is only a question of careful nursing.