1 3 2 HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



French chemist, Dumas, in 1835. • • • It is a dense, limpid, 

 colourless liquid, readily evaporating, and possessing an agree- 

 able, fragrant, fruit-like odour, and a saccharine pleasant taste." 

 Cases were cited wherein its use had been successful. These 

 investigations were afterwards published in a pamphlet form, 

 of which four thousand copies were sold in a few days. Believing 

 that he could only at first truly test the value of his discovery 

 by personal experience, he, as a matter of course, tried its 

 effects on himself "On the first occasion," he writes, "on 

 which I detected the anesthetic effects of chloroform, the 

 scene was an odd one. I had had the chloroform beside me 

 for several days, but it seemed so unlikely a liquid to produce 

 results of any kind, that it was laid aside, and on searching for 

 another object among some loose paper, after coming home 

 very late one night, my hand chanced to fall upon it, and I 

 poured some of the fluid into tumblers before my assistants, 

 Dr. Keith and Dr. Duncan, and myself Before sitting down 

 to supper, we all inhaled the fluid, and were all 'under the 

 mahogany ' in a trice, to my wife's consternation and alarm. In 

 pursuing the inquiry thus rashly, perhaps, begun, I became 

 every day more and more convinced of the superior anaesthetic 

 effects of chloroform, as compared with ether." Several 

 attempts were made both in England and America to rob him 

 of the honour of his discovery, which led to a prolonged con- 

 troversy. His butler, Clarke, who had a high opinion of the 

 properties of " chlory," as he called chloroform, found him lying 

 in his room, apparently unconscious, and suffering from the 

 effects of a recent experiment. To some friends who were 

 watching him, with a good deal of alarm, the butler remarked, 

 *' He'll kill himsel' yet wi' thae experiments ; an' he's a big fule, 

 for they'll never find ony thing better nor chlory." On another 



