ADDRESS. 5 
lodged further down in the alimentary passage. The boy has since com- 
pletely recovered. 
The Rontgen rays cause certain chemical compounds to fluoresce, and 
emit a faint light plainly visible in the dark ; and if they are made to fall 
upon a translucent screen impregnated with such a salt, it becomes 
beautifully illuminated. If a part of the human body is interposed 
between the screen and the source of the rays, the bones and other 
structures are thrown in shadow upon it, and thus a diagnosis can be 
made without the delay involved in taking a photograph. It was in fact 
in this way that Dr. Macintyre first. detected the coin in the boy’s gullet. 
Mr. Herbert Jackson, of King’s College, London, early distinguished 
himself in this branch of the subject. There is no reason to suppose that 
the limits of the capabilities of the rays in this way have yet been reached. 
By virtue of the greater density of the heart than the adjacent lungs 
with their contained air, the form and dimensions of that organ in the 
living body may be displayed on the fluorescent screen, and even its move- 
ments have been lately seen by several different observers. 
Such important applications of the new rays to medical practice have 
strongly attracted the interest of the public to them, and I venture to. 
think that they have even served: to stimulate the investigations of 
physicists. The eminent Professor of Physics in the University College: 
of this city (Professor Lodge) was one of the first to make such practical 
applications, and I was able to show to the Royal Society at a very early 
period a photograph, which he had the kindness to send me, of a bullet 
embedded in the hand. His interest in the medical aspect of the subject 
remains unabated, and at the same time he has been one of the most dis- 
tinguished investigators of its purely physical side. 
There is another way in which the Réntgen rays connect themselves 
with physiology, and’ may possibly influence medicine. It is found that 
if the skin is long exposed to their action it becomes very much irritated, 
affected with a sort of aggravated sun-burning. This suggests the idea 
that the transmission of the rays through the human body may be not 
altogether a matter of indifference to internal organs, but may, by long- 
continued action, produce, according to the condition of the part con- 
cerned, injurious irritation or salutary stimulation. 
This is the jubilee of Anesthesia in surgery. That priceless blessing 
to mankind came from America. It had, indeed, been foreshadowed in 
_ the first year of this century by Sir Humphry Davy, who, having found 
a toothache from which he was suffering relieved as he inhaled laughing 
gas (nitrous oxide), threw out the suggestion that it might perhaps be 
used for preventing pain in surgical operations. But it was not till, on 
September 30, 1846, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, of Boston, after a series of 
experiments upon himself and the lower animals, extracted a tooth pain- 
lessly from a patient whom he had caused to inhale the vapour of sul- 
phuric ether, that the idea was fully realised. He soon afterwards publicly 
