Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3829/The New Anaesthetic
A correspondent in whose accuracy we place the highest trust informs us of very remarkable results which have been achieved by the adoption of a new means of alleviating pain and suffering invented by a lady in London. This lady being suddenly taken with lumbago was in great agony until she remembered our soldiers at the front, and thought how much worse was a wound, and instantly, our correspondent is informed, some of her own distress left her. The case has been investigated by several eminent inquirers and they are satisfied with her story.
Meanwhile evidence of a simlar nature comes from other parts of the country, in every case recording a sense of personal well-being, though only comparative, and an increased disinclination to complain, upon the realisation of what it must be to be a soldier just now—whether up to his knees in a flooded trench, or sleeping on the wet ground, or lying in agony waiting to be picked up and taken to a hospital, or being taken to a hospital over holting roads, or going without meals, or having to boil tea over a candle-flame, or awakening from the operation and finding himself maimed for life.
Nor is the lenitive of this little effort of imagination confined to bodily ills; for a well-authenticated case reaches us of a notoriously mean man of wealth who was not heard to utter a single word of grumbling over the new war taxes after realising what the soldier's burden was too. Hence Mr. Punch is only too happy to give publicity to the discovery.