Sir John Lubbock’s Address. — 279 
nitrous oxide gas seems capable of destroying pain, it could 
probably be used with advantage in surgical operations.” Nay, 
this property of nitrous oxide was habitually explained and 
illustrated in the chemical lectures given in hospitals, and yet 
for fifty years the gas was never used in actual operations. No 
one did more to promote the use of anzesthetics than Sir James 
- Simpson, who introduced chloroform, a substance which was 
discovered in 1831, and which for a while almost entirely super- 
seded ether and nitrous oxide, though, with improved methods 
of administration, the latter are now coming into favor again. 
e only other reference to Physiology which time permits 
me to make, is the great discovery of the reflex action, as it is 
called, of the nervous centres. Reflex actions had been long 
ago observed, and it was known that they were more or less 
independent of volition. But the general opinion was that these 
movements indicated some feeble power of sensation independ. 
ently of the brain, and it was not till the year 1832 that the 
“reflex action” of certain nervous centres was made known to 
us by Marshall Hall, and almost at the same period by Johan- 
nes Miiller. 
Am. Jour. Sct.—Tarrp Series, Vou. XXII, No. 130.—OcToser, 1881. 
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