essful, and why it became lost is one of the mysteries of
scientific research. It did remain lost until our own time.... I
invented for the same purpose the ether spray process, in which a
benumbing cold was produced by projecting a volatile liquid like ether
or amylene, or a stream of compressed gas ... on the part to be
anaesthetized. These methods have been so widely adopted that I need
not enter into any description of them. I have merely to say that
they were made without any aid of experiments of a painful kind on the
lower animals.... The earliest experiment with ether spray was made
on my own arm.
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It is fortunate for me that I have been an eye-witness of the progress
made in this department from its practical instauration. I recall the
days when operations were performed without the aid either of general
or local methods for abolishing pain. I have myself introduced new
methods of anaesthesia, generally and locally; I have brought to trial
a large number of new anaesthetics. By the invention of the lethal
chamber I have had the delightful privilege of removing the taste and
pain of death from probably a million of those friends of man, the
faithful dogs. I write this not boastfully but truthfully.... Painful
experiments have played no indispensible part in the discovery of
anaesthesia.
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It is a curious fact that every method of research which is most
enduring, most intellectual and most free from moral evil is farthest
away from any and every thing that shocks the conscience or raises a
doubt as to necessity, in sensitive minds. If mathematics had to be
cultivated through experiments on living animals, it would never have
succeeded in unfolding the magnificent mysteries of the universe. The
same applies to the work of the science of chemistry, of botany, and
of physics generally. In my opinion, every man who studies natural
things by experiments on living subjects of any species, feels the
truth of what I am saying. I know in my own case, that my mind during
such experiments has always been in a different state according to the
line of experiment. When the experiment has been conducted on dead or
inanimate matter, the return obtained from the labour demanded has
always been not only satisfacdtory, but pleasant to the mind. On the
contrary, when the experiment has been conducted on living or animate
matter,