XXX11 INTRODUCTION. 



second greatest marvel of our time, was a thing which, in a rough way, scientific men 

 had long thought possible, but to be cut for a stone and know nothing of the agony ; 

 to have a leg removed, and smilingly ask, when the operation is over, " When are you 

 going to begin 1 " to have a nail torn away, and look on and laugh while that moafe 

 painful operation is proceeding these are marvels of which no one dreamed. No 

 extravagance of fiction equals the living reality. The discovery of the value of the 

 subcutaneous injection of morphia and other anodynes, of local ansesthesia by 

 freezing with ice or ether spray, and of general anaesthesia by ether, chloroform, and 

 laughing-gas, may rank amongst the proudest triumphs of this or any other age. 



