At first there is slight exhilaration, the pulse quickens, and the face and eyes become suffused with blood, the ideas are more vivid, and somewhat beyond the control of the will, but as yet the subject is entirely conscious, and feels moderate pain. As the action of the vapor continues, consciousness disappears, the mental faculties are uncontrolled by the will, and all the peculiarities of individual character manifest themselves: some laugh, others weep, some scold, and utter most abusive language, while many engage in exercises of devotion or break into expressions of love for those nearly related to them. We notice here the incipient action of the anaesthetic on the lobes of the brain, causing suspension of intelligence, but sensation and voluntary movement do not yet cease. In what may be called the third degree, there is profound lethargy, sensation and direct or voluntary movement cease, but reflex action still continues; thus a feather drawn across the eye causes winking. The next degree is insensibility or anæsthesia, wherein reflex action is altogether suspended; the eyeball may be touched without effect, and the muscles are perfectly relaxed. It is evident that at this stage the brain and its immediate dependencies are under the influence of the anaesthetic, but the spinal cord, which controls vegetative life, the action, namely, of the heart and lungs, remains intact. If the inhalation be continued, the circulation becomes greatly retarded, respiration is slower, and if the quantity of the vapor be increased death is the result.

Owing to the more rapid action of chloroform, fatal results are more apt to result from its employment, and so the amount administered must be regulated with great care. Not so much on the quantity administered, however, doee its fatal result depend, as on the mode of its administration. Thus, we know that the extraordinary amount of thirty-two ounces have been consumed in twenty-four hours, whereas, by the computation of Dr. Snow, a little over thirty minims suffice to stop respiration and the action of the heart. There are some states of the system, however, which will bear the action of chloroform much better than others, and this is a chicumstance which must govern its use. All diseased states of the heart and lungs forbid its employment, as these organs are not then prepared to bear the radical changes they must

"Further Remarks on the Cause and Prevention of Death by Chloroform,” by John Snow, M.D.; Lancet of February, 1856.

undergo. In nearly all cases where death resulted before a full dose of chloroform had been administered, an examination revealed an altered condition of one of these two organs. On the other hand, the puerperal state in women is highly favorable to the action of this agent, and the enlightened sentiment springing up in the profession recognises its wonderful efficacy in those cases, after long struggling against the bigotry which had sneered at the discovery of Harvey and would have ostracised Simpson and his followers.

The first advantages the medical world had descried in chloroform, and its apparent superiority over æther, began to disappear as its fatality increased. Ingenious methods for its administration were devised, but to no purpose, as often, even when the utmost care was taken, death would come with the suddenness of a thunderbolt. This caused a return to æther, which, notwithstanding its disagreeable effects, was not at all so dangerous as chloroform. In France, where chloroform was employed most extensively, the fatality was proportionately greater, and here was observed the peculiar suddenness with which it sometimes produces death. As no post-mortem examination disclosed any organic changes in the system, it was supposed that the appalling suddenness of death in those cases was due to a blasting of the nervous system, to express which French physicians adopted the term sideration. In other cases, death was brought about in one of two ways, either by suffocation; the blood, altered by the presence of a new element, refusing to circulate through the smaller vessels of the lungs; or else by paralysis of the heart. The symptoms in the former case are congestions of the head and face. Glaring eyes, tumid veins, convulsive spasms, ineffectual efforts to expand the chest, preceded by a sense of choking and irresistible propensity to struggle against further inhalation. Dr. Chapman, in proof of this mode of death from chloroform, records an experiment in which the heart of a cat poisoned by chloroform was made to resume its pulsations.

But the most wonderful action of chloroform is that by which it paralyzes the heart; the subject suddenly rises from a recumbent posture, and struggles for a moment; the face assumes a death-like pallor; the blood ceases to flow from the arteries; the pulse is no longer felt; a few convulsive gasps, and all is over. Though these instances of the fatal

*"How Chloroform kills," Med. Times, Oct.18, 1850.

ity of chloroform are of sufficiently frequent occurrence to inspire great apprehension in its use, yet they are exceedingly few when we consider the almost countless cases in which this agent was employed. Thus, according to a calculation made by Dr. Chapman in England, it appears that, in the course of ten years, 1,200,000 were subjected to the anæsthetic influence, and that only one in every 16,216 lives were lost; deaths from chloroform being sixty-two; from æther, two; from a mixture of chloroform and æther, one; from a mixture of chloroform and alcohol, one; and from amylene, two. This is surely a small aggregate of mortality when we reflect on the great number of cases in which these anæsthetics were administered. The use of other agents, as Dutch liquid, a compound of chlorine and olefiant amylene and bisulphuret of carbon, has not been attended with more than partial success; hence, æther and chloroform are the only general anesthetics used. American surgeons prefer a mixture of æther and chloroform, and the experience of the late war shows that it is safer than chloroform alone, and equally efficacious.

ART. VIII.-Proclamation suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland; Debates in Parliament, &c. February, 1866. THE suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland is an event to which no philanthropist who is acquainted with the history of that unfortunate country can feel indifferent. It shows that nearly seven centuries of misrule and oppression have failed to reconcile the Irish people to British domination; although none know better than they what it is to' resist the oppressor. The most ignorant of her peasantry are well aware of the many desperate efforts made by Ireland during these long centuries to relieve herself from the of grasp England; they are also aware that those efforts have proved not only fruitless, but ruinous. No traditions are more carefully transmitted from father to son, generation after generation, than those which relate to the butcheries and cruelties of all kinds which Erin has had to undergo for every earnest attempt she has made to regain her freedom; they perfectly understand that her insurrections have not only riveted her chains upon her more and more closely in every instance, but also that they have caused her to be beaten with many stripes.

It is incredible with what accuracy they can point out the scenes of massacres of which their ancestors were the victims centuries ago, as penalties for wishing to have a government of their own. They can show the sites of villages which had once been populous and flourishing, but of which there is not now a vestige left, because their inhabitants were supposed to be rebels; and they can lead the curious stranger to the very cave where their priests used to have to conceal themselves, not because they taught a religion different from that of the English law church, although this is the reason generally assigned, but because, instead of counselling their flocks to submit without a murmur to any exactions, however oppressive, which their English masters chose to impose upon them, they sometimes reminded them that they, too, had rights, and protested even out of their caves against their wrongs.

When a people with these experiences resolve to rebel, fully aware of the worst consequences that can result from their conduct, while the military tribunal and the gibbet are already preparing for them, and the hangman is ready with his rope, the most sceptical must acknowledge that, no matter what is asserted to the contrary by those whose interest it is to retain them in subjection, they must have strong provocation. But in the case of Ireland we have not to depend on any inferences, however logical; all who have any knowledge of the country, and are capable of tracing effects to their causes, are aware that, although important concessions have been wrung from England within the present century, the Irish have still to bear a heavier burden than any other people in Christendom, not excepting the Poles; nay, it is really no exaggeration to say that they suffer worse grievances at this moment than the Greeks did during the most gloomy period of Turkish dominion.

We are not influenced in making this assertion by any prejudice against the British people. We disclaim any such feeling; nor would we say one word to cause any annoyance to individual Englishmen at home or abroad. Were it otherwise, we should be incapable of discussing our present subject, since we could not do so fairly or justly without acknowledging that none have protested more indignantly or more eloquently against the wrongs of Ireland than Englishmen; a fact which it will afford us pleasure to illustrate in the course of this article. We need hardly remark, then, that it is not Saxon or Norman we hold responsible

for the proverbial sufferings of Ireland, but the British government. That the latter has never been the friend of that unhappy country is notorious throughout the world; nay, a generous enemy would have treated her much better than it has ever done. Never yet has it voluntarily granted her any important concession; in every instance, fear, in one form or other, has been its prevailing motive in conceding her any boon. It was a favorite precept with O'Connell, that England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity;" and that great man never uttered a sentiment in his numerous eloquent denunciations against the oppressor, for which he has been more abused, than he has for this, but, nevertheless, he has never uttered a truer one.

Any one who doubts this has only to glance at the history of Ireland from the time of our own Revolutionary War to the present. Eloquent, persevering, and resolute as Grattan was, for example, he would have exerted himself in vain to secure the independence of the Irish parliament even for a few years, had he not been supported by that fine army of Volunteers which did not value liberty anything the less because its original object was to protect the country from a French invasion. It was not until this well-disciplined body, of whose bravery there could be no question, made its cele brated Declaration, that the exclusive power of the Irish parliament to legislate for Ireland was acknowledged by England. Even the emancipation of the Catholics was never granted, after years of agitation and discussion, until the Duke of Wellington declared, in the House of Lords, that he could not be responsible for the safety of Ireland if that concession was withheld any longer.

We cannot say, therefore, that we are opposed to the present movement of the Fenians, although, for various reasons, we have not much confidence that it will succeed. If, in spite of the vigorous and despotic measures which have been taken by the British government, a general insurrection takes place, and that it is put down in the usual way, there will be new scenes of desolation, fresh massacres, renewed oppression in every form. But the victims will not have bled and writhed in vain; sooner or later the day of reckoning will come; but even before it does after England has given full vent to her passion, ex more—she will see that after all John Bright only told her the simple truth, ten or twelve days since, when he reminded her that, if Ireland is to be reconciled to British rule, it must be " by a new policy and by just concessions to the wants of that country."