AM.MAL I'LKCTRICITV.- LECTURE I. 2 1 



at once set i^oini^- a chloroform observation on nerve 

 in the manner now familiar to you, in order to 

 allow time for the observation to be sufficiently 

 cooent as regards one main fact in the subject, 

 viz., that chloroform is far more powerfully toxic 

 than ether, that its full effect is apt to be final, 

 not followed by recovery within any reasonable 

 lapse of time. Obviously this is a point of great 

 practical significance, that may at any moment be- 

 come a matter of urgent personal anxiety ; and in 

 what I shall have to say it will be impossible not 

 to make statements having immediate practical appli- 

 cations. My experiments were not, however, pri- 

 marily addressed to the practical issue ; they were 

 instituted solely for the purpose of testing the value 

 of nerve towards its further utilisation as a test- 

 object. And after all, anxious as I am not to 

 infringe upon medical matters in presence of a non- 

 medical audience, I shall prefer to explicitly formu- 

 late the inference as it presents itself to my mind, 

 thinking on the non-medical lines of a purely scien- 

 tific student, rather than to leave a perhaps hasty 

 and popular inference to be drawn less guardedly 

 and cautiouslv than mioht seem to be desirable. 



This is the jubilee year — the jubilee day in fact— 

 of the first trial of chloroform as an anaesthetic. On 

 January 19, 1847, Sir James Simpson performed his 

 first operation under chloroform anaesthesia. The 

 manifestly beneficent effects of this powerful anaesthetic 



