AND THE HEALING ART 491 



upon it, and thus a diagnosis can be made without the dela}- involved in taking 

 a photograph. It was in fact in this way that Dr. Macintyre first detected 

 the coin in the boy's gullet. Mr. Herbert Jackson, of King's College, London, 

 early distinguished himself in this branch of the subject. There is no reason to 

 suppose that the limits of the capabilities of the rays in this way have yet 

 been reached. By virtue of the greater density of the heart than the adjacent 

 lungs with their contained air, the form and dimensions of that organ in the lix-ing 

 body may be displayed on the fluorescent screen, and even its movements have 

 been lately seen by several different observers. 



Such important applications of the new rays to medical practice have 

 strongly attracted the interest of the public to them, and I venture to think 

 that they have even served to stimulate the investigations of physicists. The 

 eminent Professor of Physics in the University College of this city (Professor 

 Lodge) was one of the first to make such practical applications, and I was able 

 to show to the Royal Society at a very early period a photograph, which he had 

 the kindness to send me, of a bullet embedded in the hand. His interest in 

 the medical aspect of the subject remains unabated, and at the same time he 

 has been one of the most distinguished investigators of its purely physical side. 



There is another way in which the ROntgen rays connect themselves with 

 physiology, and may possibly influence medicine. It is found that if the skin 

 is long exposed to their action it becomes very much irritated, affected with a 

 sort of aggravated sun-burning. This suggests the idea that the transmission of 

 the rays through the human body may be not altogether a matter of indifference 

 to internal organs, but may, by long-continued action, produce, according to 

 the condition of the part concerned, injurious irritation or salutary stimulation. 



This is the jubilee of Anaesthesia in surgery. That priceless blessing to 

 mankind came from America. It had, indeed, been foreshadowed in the first 

 year of this century by Sir Humphrey Dav}-, who, having found a toothache 

 from which he was suffering relieved as he inhaled laughing gas (nitrous oxide), 

 threw out the suggestion that it might perhaps be used for preventing pain in 

 surgical operations. But it was not till, on the 30th of September, 1846, 

 Dr. W. T. G. Morton, of Boston, after a series of experiments upon himself 

 and the lower animals, extracted a tooth painlessly from a patient whom he had 

 caused to inhale the vapour of sulphuric ether, that the idea was fully realized. 

 He soon afterwards publicly exhibited his method at the Massachusetts General 

 Hospital, and after that event the great discovery spread rapidly over the 

 civilized world. I witnessed the first operation in England under ether. It 

 was performed by Robert Liston in University College Hospital, and it was 

 a complete success. Soon afterwards I saw the same great surgeon amputate 



K k 2 



