624 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



ought not to be here as a witness, but as a principal." Those who 

 know Dr. Hare would be able to appreciate the remark. Dr. 

 Jackson had also been called by the defence in that suit. 



Mr. Hildreth remarked, that we ouglit not only to be just, but 

 generous, and award merit in discovery where it belonged. Mr. 

 Fulton, to whom the popular mind ascribes the invention of the 

 application of steam to the propulsion of a steamboat, had made 

 atrip upon the river Clyde, in Scotland, in a steamboat, before his 

 memorable trip up the North river; while the bones of Mr. John 

 Fitch, the real inventor and discoverer, who had exhibited his 

 model of a steamboat to Mr. Fulton in France, some twenty years 

 previous, now lay in an unhouored grave, on the banks of the 

 Ohio. It was not until sixty years after the death of Watt, that 

 the French Institute sent a commission, consisting of Messieurs. 

 Arago and Dumas, to England, to collect facts, to enable them to 

 write an eulogy of Watt. Mr. Hildreth said he had seen twenty- 

 six books, in the languages of Europe, si:)eaking of Dr. Jackson in 

 the highest terms, in regard to another discovery made by him, of 

 rendering the human body insensible to pain during surgical ope- 

 rations and child-birth. In one of these books America was 

 spoken of as " the country of Jackson and of Franklin." The 

 highest Montyon prize for the greatest discovery in medicine and 

 surgery, for the year 1850, was awarded by the French Institute 

 to Dr. Jackson, for his discovery of etherization; and the honor- 

 able members of that body had procured of the government of 

 France tlie Cross of the Legion of Honor, at the same time that 

 they procured a similar distinction tor the eminent naturalist, M. 

 Ronpland, wdio spent nearly a lifetime in profound researches 

 in South America. The present Sultan of Turkey, seeing the 

 vast importance and advantage of this discovery, during the 

 Crimean war, where it had been successfully used in thirty-one 

 thousand cases, had conferred upon Dr. Jackson the decoration of 

 Mejidiah. The King of Sweden, at the suggestion of the great 

 chemist Berzelius, had also awarded to Dr. Jackson a gold medal 

 of merit, struck expressly for the occasion. These two discove- 

 ries were not all that had been made by Dr. Jackson. Mr. Hil- 

 dreth knew of many others made by him, and instanced his dis- 



