ON THE VAPOUR OF .ETHER. 
141 
^Ether now seems to be a plaything with the scientific : successful 
cases are reported, as though there were no others to announce. 
We hear only of what has succeeded, and this so often, that it 
seems the evidence of a fact is thought worthy of constant reitera- 
tion. If belief is so hard to gain, then the present habit is neces- 
sary ; but in it 1 perceive a danger. By these successful cases the 
public are taught to infer that failure is impossible, and the profes- 
sion led to believe that after-results are of no consequence. We 
do not need any more of such reports. We know that aether does 
produce insensibility ; but, unhappily, that is almost all we know 
about it, and, while the present mania continues, is all we are likely 
to learn. One fact is surely proved by as large a testimony as 
could be desired ; then pass from what is established, and seek 
knowledge in another line. We want ^successful cases; — we 
now require instances where the aether partially operated or totally 
failed. We want proof of the danger which attends it, or the evils 
to which it can give rise. We have seen and recognised the good 
side of the subject, but have hardly thought that there may be an- 
other aspect to the matter. 
Most of all I deprecate the use some persons have not scrupled 
to make of the feeling which the great American discovery has 
excited. Many persons have not hesitated to convert the circum- 
stance into a means of puffing themselves in the daily papers, 
and have not shrunk from seeking that kind of notoriety which 
it was once thought quacks alone were desirous of obtaining. A 
wretched animal procured from the knacker, and mutilated while 
under the influence of sether, should not by the Professor of a 
college have been magnified into the subject of a surgical opera- 
tion. There is a huge difference between a surgical necessity and 
a speculative barbarity. The public, by their execration of the 
habits of the Alfort school, have recognised the distinction. Pro- 
fessor Spooner degraded himself when he needlessly wounded the 
poor beast he had previously rendered powerless. These things 
are not required. The world is so full of suffering, science is not 
needed to increase it. Neither is cruelty necessary for the experi- 
ment. The paring of a corn or the dressing of a foot would have 
told all that the division of a nerve could have exemplified. Then, 
moreover, a result procured upon an aged, enfeebled, and emaciated 
animal is of no value. The horse in the knackers yard is not the 
creature of the noble’s stable. What the lingering life of the one 
would endure, might cause the spirit of the other to burst its 
bounds. The act was mean, the pains taken to make it public 
foolish, and the attempt to pass it off* for a surgical operation dis- 
honest. 
Among animals, at least so far as I have experience, the vapour 
