306 
ANAESTHETIC AGENTS. 
“ The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to day, 
Had he thy reason would he skip and play ? 
Pleas’d to the last he crops the flow’ry food, 
And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.” 
Yet there is a reason, and a cogent one too, why partial 
insensibility should be produced in the brute, namely, the 
difficulty of causing an animal to lie quiet, and in one posi- 
tion, when confined, so that the operator may be enabled 
successfully to perform his duty. 
It is now pretty generally agreed that no apparatus is 
necessary for the administration of anaesthetics to the horse. 
The plan adopted at the Royal Veterinary College is simple, 
but effective. A piece of sponge, containing from one to two 
ounces of chloroform, is placed in the fundus of a bladder, 
for the convenience of being held in the hand and preventing 
waste ; under this is either some sheet gutta percha or oil-skin, 
this being sufficiently large to be turned over the bladder and 
the nostril of the horse. This suffices to direct the vapour, 
while at the same time the administrator is protected from 
its influence. The other nostril is allowed to remain open, 
so that atmospheric air may enter the lungs mixed writh the 
anaesthetic. In from ten to thirteen minutes the horse is 
narcotized. For smaller animals, such as the dog and the cat, 
the sponge may be put in a piece of tin tubing large enough 
to pass over both the nostrils. 
Among the substances first advocated to cause insensitive- 
ness was ether; but whether from the high state of excite- 
ment produced by it on the system before its sedative action 
took place, or from the rapidity with which its effects passed 
off, from its being exhaled by the lungs, it soon gave place 
to chloroform, introduced by Dr. Simpson. Other agents 
were experimented on, as chloric ether, by Mr. Jacob Bell; 
nitrous oxide, suggested by Sir H. Davy, many years ago ; 
and the fumes disengaged from the combustion of the Lyco - 
perdon Proteus , or common puff-ball, resorted to by Dr. 
Richardson ; which, according to him, contains a narcotic 
principle, the action of which resembles that produced by 
tobacco, “ w r ith the addition of more decided narcotism and 
insensibility/* This, also, appears to have been brought 
about in animals quickly, and to have lasted for a long 
period; nevertheless, chloroform maintained its supremacy. 
Of late, however, from very many instances of death occurring, 
either from the incautious exhibition of chloroform, or the 
idiosyncracy of the patient, there appears to be a disposition 
on the part of the human practitioner to return to the use of 
ether. Dr. Snow, who has given much attention to this 
