ON CHLOROFORM. 
107 
long men may stand on the brink of a discovery without reaching 
it, to which subsequent reflection may shew them that many cir- 
cumstances have pointed. The discovery now to be treated of we 
owe to the United States of America. According to his own 
statement, Mr. Horace Wells, a dentist, of Hartford, Connecticut, 
in reflecting on the fact that individuals, either in a state of high 
excitement from ordinary causes, or when intoxicated with spi- 
rituous liquors, may receive severe wounds without manifesting 
the least suffering, was led to inquire whether the same result 
would not follow' from the inhalation of some exhilarating gas, the 
effects of which would pass off* immediately, leaving the system 
none the worse for its use. Accordingly, in the fall of 1844, he 
had himself a tooth extracted, and performed the same operation 
on others, under the influence of nitrous oxide gas, without pain. 
He states further, that he communicated the result of these experi- 
ments to Dr. Morton, Dr. Jackson, and others in Boston. Whether 
as the result of such communication, or from his own reflection on 
the effects of nitrous oxide and the vapour of ether, Dr. Morton, of 
Boston, in September 184ft, extracted a tooth from a stout, healthy 
man, whom he had caused to inhale the vapour of ether, and who 
avowed a total unconsciousness of its removal. From that time 
the discovery was made known in America, and speedily found 
its way to this country, where it has met with the advocacy, scep- 
ticism, and opposition, which are the usual fate of such novelties. 
Dr. J. Y. Simpson, professor of midwifery in the University of 
Edinburgh, who has, since the introduction of ether inhalation into 
this country, carried on the investigation of the merits of the prac- 
tice with the greatest ardour and assiduity, had been for some time 
on the search for other vapours possessing the properties of ether 
without certain disadvantages connected with its use, the result of 
which has been the discovery of such properties in chloroform, 
through the following circumstances : — 
The term chloric ether w r as at one time applied to the chloride of 
olefiant gas, or Dutch liquid of chemists. In 1837, Mr. Guthrie, 
an American chemist, was led by a statement in Silliman’s 
Elements of Chemistry, that the alcoholic solution of chloric ether 
was a grateful and diffusible stimulant, to attempt a cheap and easy 
process for its preparation. This he did by distilling a mixture 
of spirit and chloride of lime, collecting the product so long as it 
came over sweet and aromatic. This both Guthrie and Silliman 
supposed to be a solution of the chloride of olefiant gas, and called 
it chloric ether. In reality it was an impure spirituous solution of 
chloroform. 
In 1831 Soubeiran, and in 1832 Liebig, prepared a liquid by a 
similar process, and separated the chloroform. Dumas, in 1834, 
