PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF THE METHYL AND ALLIED SERIES. 421 



the heart has ceased, and all further attempts are irscless, or until there is 

 evidence of natural respiration. But when there is once evidence of natural 

 respiration, I am specially cautious to do no more unless the natural act 

 should of itself cease, when I repeat as before. In all my experiments I 

 have never seen the respiration cease after it has been restored, except in one 

 solitary case, and then the relapse was probaby due to injury due to forcing 

 the artificial respiration too strongly at first. On the other side I have fre- 

 quently seen the continuance of artificial respiration, after the establishment 

 of natural respiration, from the doing too much, destroy effectuall}' the good 

 which had previously been accomplislied. 



"With this convenient instrument, after cessation of breathing by any 

 of the narcotic vapours not heavier than chloroform, life seems to me to be 

 restorable in a large majority of eases, if the respiration be artificially com- 

 menced within three minutes after its cessation. 



CONCLUSION. 



I have thus, Mr. President, brought my labours this year to a close. Had 

 time been permitted for further research, I should have entered upon the 

 study of one or two new series of bodies ; but the laboiir must be held in 

 reserve. 



We cannot pretend in Reports like these to vie with our more fortunate 

 brethren in other departments of science. The ph}-siologist has no ground of 

 pleasant work in common with the astronomer, the geographer, geologist, 

 ethnologist, or chemist. His researches are hard (unrelenting I had almost 

 said), excessively minute, laborious, and at all times, however absorbing, 

 painful ; many of them can, in fact, only be carried on under a sense of duty 

 amounting to necessity, and with the sincerest, the most solemn feeling that 

 they are being conducted for the ultimate benefit of all the higher classes of 

 animal existence. In the preparation of this Eeport I have held on through- 

 out by this sense of duty, and earnest faith that good must come out of the 

 laboiu". 



One object which I had directly in view has been to introduce certain new 

 substances which may be directly apphed in our treatment for the cure of 

 disease, or for relief of pain ; another object has been to discover the best 

 means of removing danger, from the use or abuse of some of the more 

 potent agents ; but the leading idea of the Eeport is that which I brought 

 forward at the Bii-mingham Meeting — the idea of studying the action of 

 substances which are to become remedies, not by the old and faulty method 

 of so-called experience, but by proving physiological action and the relation 

 of chemical constitution to physiological action. I am certain the time must 

 soon come when the books we call " Pharmacopoeias " will be everywhere re- 

 consti'ucted on this basis of thought, and when the chemist and physician 

 will become one and one. That this huge reform may be commenced by 

 order of the legislative authorities in this country is to me an earnest hope. 

 Put whether this shall be the final result or not, I shall always recall, with 

 satisfaction, the remembrance that the idea of the reform and the first work- 

 ing of it began in England, and under the auspices of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science. 



