he had prepared." From the time of Noah to that of Long, Morton, Wells, and Warren, the history of anaesthesia is concisely summarized in the first chapter of the present work; a history terminating in the final success of the search, which man has been making from the remotest antiquity, for the means of arresting or annihilating physical pain. "The venerable Nestor came to the relief of the wounded Machaon with a medicated poultice composed of cheese, onions, and meal, mixed with the wine of Pramnos. . . . Some preparation of opium or of Indian-hemp it may have been with which, after the ten years' siege was ended, beautiful Helen drove away sad memories from the minds of her husband and his friends, making them drink of wine into which she cast a drug presented to her by the Egyptian princess Polydamna. Most potent this same nepenthe must have been, for we are told (Odyssey, iv, 220) that it delivered men from grief and wrath, and caused oblivion of every ill." Some of the ancient soporifics are well-known to us, as opium, Indian hemp, mandragora; and probably they employed carbonic-acid gas also. Mandragora was the favorite among the Greeks; infused in wine, it was known as morion. "Apuleius states that half an ounce of this would render a person insensible even to the pain of an amputation. Dioscorides taught that the sleep thus produced might continue four hours or more; hence, no doubt, various legends which were by Shakespeare interwoven into the story of Juliet. The wine mingled with myrrh which was offered, according to the custom of the kind-hearted Jewish women of the day, to Jesus on the cross, was unquestionably this same mandragora-wine." During the time of Dante the following soporific, Hugo di Lucca's prescription, was used for patients about to undergo operations: they were caused "to breathe the vapors given off from a sponge moistened with warm water, after it had been thoroughly steeped in a decoction of opium, deadly nightshade, hyoseyamus, mandragora, hemlock, ivy, and lettuce. Sponges thus medicated were to be dried in the sunshine, and stored for use as occasion might require.
During the eighteenth century trials were made for anæsthetic purposes of hypnotism, freezing mixtures, intoxication, and pressure upon the trunks of the principal nerves. All these methods were, of course, unsatisfactory; chemical science, indeed, was not yet sufficiently advanced for the more recent discoveries. In 1799 Sir Humphry Davy discovered the intoxicating effects of nitrous oxide gas. Sulphuric ether was employed by Dr. Pearson, of Birmingham, in 1785, as a means of relief for spasmodic asthma; and in 1805 by Dr. Warren, of Boston, in the later stages of consumption. It was first used to produce insensibility to pain during a surgical operation by Dr. W. C. Long, of Jefferson, Georgia, in 1842. This great event, says Professor Lyman, was thus simply recorded by Dr. Long in his ledger: 'James Venable, 18-12. Ether and excising tumor, $2.00.' In the same year, William T. G. Morton employed sulphuric ether in tooth-pulling. Then came nitrous oxide or laughing-gas, used in tooth-pulling in 1844, by Horace Wells. In October, 1840, Morton made the surgical use of ether known to the world. "From that date the success of anæsthesia in surgery was placed beyond all doubt." In 1847 the eminent physiologist, Flourens, discovered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform, and it came rapidly into use. These are the facts over which the endless controversies of the rival claimants have been raised—controversies which this is not the place to follow.
From the history of anaesthesia Professor Lyman passes to its physiology and its phenomena; discussing the various procedures by which it is produced, whether generally or locally, the statistics and the treatment of the accidents resulting from it, the medico-legal relations of the subject, and the various classes of cases in which the anaesthetic substances may be employed. The larger part of his book is taken up by a detailed examination of the numerous substances classifiable under his title, no less than forty-seven being enumerated and described, besides which other methods than the posological, as anæsthesia by electricity, by rapid respiration, and by cold, arc studied. A feature of the work is the citation of remarkable illustrative cases. The experience of Dr. J. Marion Sims (p. 58), in a case of apparent death from chloroform, is one of those dramatic recitals which give
