492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



1868, the late Mr. Daniel Hanbury, F. R S., brought with him to the 

 meeting, from Germany, a specimen of the hydrate and a brief verbal 

 account of the phenomena which it had been found to produce on liv- 

 ing bodies. The facts related by Mr. Hanbury proved of so much in- 

 terest to the members of the Biological Section, that they elected me, 

 who had just been submitting a report on an allied subject, to make a 

 further and special report during the meeting on this particular sub- 

 ject. I accepted the duty at once, and conducted a series of experi- 

 mental researches, the results of which were duly laid before the sec- 

 tion on the last day of the meeting. The results were among the most 

 singular I had ever witnessed, and the report upon them raised an 

 intense curiosity among the medical men and the men of science in 

 this country. Liebreich's discovery became the physiological event 

 of the year, and for some months I was engaged, at every leisure 

 moment, in demonstrating the various and unique facts which that 

 discovery had brought forth. 



In this chloral hydrate we were found to possess an agent very 

 soluble and manageable, which, introduced into the body of a man or 

 other animal, quickly caused the deepest possible sleep, a sleep pro- 

 longed for many hours, and which could be brought so near to the 

 sleep of death that an animal in it might pass for dead and still re- 

 cover. In this substance we also found we had an agent which was 

 actually decomposed within the blood, and which in its decomposition 

 yielded the product chloroform which caused the sleep ; a product 

 which distilled over, as it were, from the blood into the nervous struc- 

 ture, and gave rise to the deep narcotism. 



The discovery of Liebreich opened a new world of research, the 

 lessons derived from which I shall never forget. And yet, now that 

 ten years have passed away, and I have lived to see the influence on 

 mankind of what is in one sense a beneficent, and in another sense a 

 maleficent substance, I almost feel a regret that I took any part what- 

 ever in the introduction of the agent into the practice of healing and 

 the art of medicine. 



About three months after my report was read at the meeting of 

 the British Association for the Advancement of Science the first pain- 

 ful experience resulting from chloral hydrate came under my knowl- 

 edge. A medical man of middle age and comfortable circumstances 

 took, either by accident or intention, what was computed to be a dose 

 of 190 grains of chloral hydrate. He had bought, a few days before 

 this event, 240 grains of the substance. He took a first dose of ten 

 grains in order to procure sleep. On a following night he took twenty 

 grains, and on the evening of the succeeding day twenty grains more. 

 These administrations were known. He had reduced his store by these 

 takings to 190 grains, and, while in a state of semi-consciousness from 

 the last quantity, he got up from the bed on which he was reclining, 

 and emptied all the remaining contents of the bottle into a small turn- 



