1867. J Richardson's Ether-Spray. 59 



and about a year since it began to be rumoured in medical circles in 

 London that lie had succeeded in renderhig diseased parts so com- 

 pletely insensible to pain by external appliances as to admit of 

 surgical operations being performed in which the use of chloroform 

 had previously been indispensable, and where it had often been 

 followed by fatal results. He had for many years been applying 

 substances to the surface of the body with a view to freeze the 

 affected part, for he had arrived at the conclusion that the sense 

 current in the nervous system is thermal and not electrical, and 

 that therefore the proper means of producing insensibility in any 

 part would be to rapidly abstract the heat from that part, but his 

 success had been partial only, and the length of time occupied in 

 preparing for the operation was such as to render the general in- 

 troduction of his method impracticable. We purposely pass over 

 his unsuccessful t work (which was not, therefore, the less meri- 

 torious), in order that our limited space may be devoted to the 

 account of what he has accomplished for the benefit of mankind; 

 and, as already hinted, an apparent accident it was that crowned 

 his efforts with success. 



"Whilst he was at a ball in London, in the year 1862, a lady 

 approached him with one of Eimmel's vaporisers, and drawing his 

 attention to the new discovery for ministering to man's — or we 

 should, perhaps, rather say woman's — enjoyment, she blew a little 

 of the vapour or spray of Eau-de-Cologne against his forehead. 

 He was taken by surprise, and was still more astonished when, on 

 feeling his forehead, he found it cold, and that part on which the 

 spray had played wanting in sensibility. He told the lady she 

 had discovered a means of producing local ancesthesia, but it was 

 he who had discovered it. Nor yet was it by accident; for if 

 the young lady had puffed her scent into the faces of some dozens 

 of young dandies, the effect would simply have been to amuse or 

 to annoy them, whilst a meaningless joke practised upon the person 

 of a man whose mind was penetrated with one great object, and in 

 whose thoughts that object was ever present, led to a discovery 

 for which the human race will bless the discoverer in all time. 



From the period referred to until the close of 1865, Dr. 

 Richardson constantly but secretly studied the subject, and was en- 

 gaged in experimenting with various volatile liquids and gases, and 

 in the construction of a suitable apparatus for administering the spray, 

 but although the process came into general use in the hospitals, 

 as well as amongst the medical profession in London some months 

 since, and a few country practitioners also apply it, its great 

 advantages are not yet generally known, and it was not until the 

 discoverer produced local ancesthesia on the arm of the President 

 of the British Association, at Nottingham, and transfixed him with 

 needles, that its wonderful efficacy began to attract public attention. 



