AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 625 



coveries of mines of native copper, at Lake Superior, the occur- 

 rence of which, except as an accidental product, was denied by 

 all the geologists of the United States. Dr. Jackson nevertheless 

 maintained that they did exist, as he had predicted from his sur- 

 face experiments; and his friends have since proved and verified 

 the deduction of Dr. Jackson, by opening these mines. Mr. Hil- 

 dreth spoke of Dr. Jackson's high character for truthfulness, and 

 said, he would rather lose his life than misstate a fact. He also 

 spoke of his having dissected the first cholera subject in the city 

 of Vienna, wdien the cholera made its first appearance in Europe, 

 ■while all the great surgeons of that city looked on through a glass 

 window, momentarily expecting the death of the Doctor, who was 

 then quite a young man. Dr. Jackson had risked his life in a 

 similar manner, for the benefit of humanity, in making his disco- 

 very of etherization. Mr. Hildreth, in reply to a suggestion of 

 Mr. Tilden, that Mr. Wells had been awarded the discovery of 

 etherization, said, that such was not the fact. The discovery of 

 etherization was made by Dr. Jackson, in a lecture delivered by 

 him before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Association, dur- 

 ing the wanter of 1841, in which he was engaged in showing the 

 theory of volcanic eruptions. He had accidentally broken a glass 

 jar filled with chlorine gas, by which his lungs were filled with 

 it, and became greatly irritated. He then sent for sulphuric ether 

 and ammonia, and breathed each, alternately, as he had been 

 accustomed to do in these accidents since 1831. Discovering a 

 cessation of pain in his lungs after breathing the ether, it occurred 

 to him that he had paralyzed the nerves of sensation; and deter- 

 mined to test this, he went to his laboratory, and, notwithstanding 

 ether w^as described in all the works on materia and toxocology 

 as dangerous to breathe, and accounts of death by it were given, 

 he then breathed it to the extent of entire insensibility; finding 

 that, upon awakening from it, he perceived no sense of touch of 

 the chair in wiiich he was seated, the idea Hashed upon liis mind 

 that he had made that great discovery for which he had long been 

 seeking — a means to annul pain in the human body. Mr. Wells, 

 in presenting a written statement of Iiis claims to the French 

 Institute, (among fourteen other claimants beside Dr. Jackson,) 

 [Am. L\st.] 40 



