ANESTHETICS. ANCIENT CONDITION OF MAN. 23 



gas was never used in actual operations. No one did 

 more to promote the use of anaesthetics than Sir James 

 Y. Simpson, who introduced chloroform, a substance 

 which was discovered in 1831, and which for a while 

 almost entirely superseded ether and nitrous oxide, 

 though with improved methods of administration, the 

 latter are now coming into favour again. 



The only other reference to Physiology which time 

 permits me to make, is the great discovery of the reflex 

 action, as it is called, of the nervous centres. Reflex 

 actions had been long ago observed, and it had been 

 shown by Whytt and Hales that they were more or less 

 independent .of volition. But the general opinion was 

 that these movements indicated some feeble power of 

 sensation independently of the brain, and it was not till 

 the year 1832 that the ' reflex action ' of certain nervous 

 centres was made known to us by Marshall Hall, and 

 almost at the same period by Johannes Miiller. 



Few branches of science have made more rapid pro- 

 gress in the last half- century than that which deals with 

 the ancient condition of Man. When our Association 

 was founded it was generally considered that the human 

 race suddenly appeared on the scene, about 6,000 years 

 ago, after the disappearance of the extinct mammalia, 

 and when Europe, both as regards physical conditions 

 and the other animals by which it was inhabited, was 

 pretty much in the same state as in the period covered 

 by Greek and Roman history. Since then the perse- 

 vering researches of Layard, Rawlinson, Botta and 

 others have made known to us, not only the statues and 

 palaces, of the ancient Assyrian monarchs, but even 



