16 LIFE OF TEGETMEIER 



the site of Miss Kelly's theatre in Dean Street. 

 It is a singular example of the connection of the 

 present with the past, that Miss Kelly was an 

 actress who performed on the stage as a child 

 in the century before the last. She died only 

 a few years ago, being carefully tended in her 

 decay by my dear old friend, the late Mrs. Keeley. 

 But medical education has changed in a most 

 extraordinary manner during the last three score 

 years. At that time operations were performed 

 without the employment of any anaesthetics, 

 and their horror need not be insisted on. I was 

 a pupil of the celebrated surgeon Lister, and I 

 saw the first operation that he performed under 

 the influence of ether, the anaesthetic then used, 

 and I also witnessed the celebrated surgeon, 

 Baron Heurteloup, give his first public demonstra- 

 tion in London of lithotrity, which has saved 

 the lives of thousands of patients." 



The mention of ether reminds me that 

 Tegetmeier could, and occasionally did, tell 

 terrible stories of sights seen in the operating 

 theatre during his student days. Chloroform, 

 it scarcely needs observing, was tried experi- 

 mentally as an anaesthetic only in 1847, some 

 five or six years after he had abandoned surgery. 

 There was practically no method of alleviating 

 the agony of patients who had to submit to the 

 surgeon's knife, when Tegetmeier was " walking 

 the hospitals." I remember one tragi-comic story 

 he was fond of relating whenever the subject of 

 anaesthetics came up for discussion. It was 

 about a little boy who having had his leg care- 

 lessly amputated by a country doctor, was 



