Dr. Scoutetten, physician to the Military Hospital of Metz, relates the following: - "I found myself seated close to a young lady in a "theatre to witness a curious performance called 'Etherization.' "The actor, to better carry out the delusion, threw a small quantity of "ether in the parquet, which vapour on raising the curtain dispersed "into the body of the theatre. At the instant and without any warn"ing, the young lady fell asleep, all sensibility was extinguished, all "feeling and consciousness disappeared; this greatly impressed me. "Sometime afterwards I questioned the lady, and learnt that it only "sufficed to open a bottle containing ether in a room or a church for "sleep to be produced the moment the vapour reached her."

In making my experiments in 1842 and 1843 with the fumes of poppy heads, olibanum, myrrh, coriander seeds, alcohol and sulphuric ether, though no appreciable vapour escaped into the apartment or lecture room, it often happened that persons were narcotized and thrown into an insensible coma. Call this what you may, idiosyncrasy, vital susceptibility, or temperament, it is an admitted fact that the nervous system of some persons is so sensitive that it only requires the most minute foreign agent to produce an allotropic state of the nervous system.

Hydrocyanic acid is ranked amongst the anaesthetics; in fine, all those agents which destroy sensibility, and are non-supporters of combustion, are also destroyers of life. It is not so with protoxide of nitrogen gas, which supports combustion and stimulates the functions of the lungs in excess of their normal functions, producing nervous congestion without loading the circulation with a foreign substance, as is the case when chloroform is inhaled. The chlorine and carbon compounds depress or render negative the nervous system, they produce the anaesthetic condition at the expense of the vital element.

Until the occult forces which govern the functions of life are better understood, the most eminent members of the medical profession will remain at variance as to the safest anaesthetics.

Dr. Sansom justly says: - "Consider how our faculties and func"tions are maintained during life and health. The circulation "throughout our body of the blood, which receives from the air we "breathe a due supply of oxygen, is a necessity of perfect life. In a "normal state the blood charged with it permeates everywhere through"out the system, undergoing that wonderful process of combustion, "ending in the excretion of carbonic acid, which causes the heat of the "body; it reacts on every tissue, developing electric and other correlated "forces obedient to and yet producing the unknown vital principle.

Perfect venous blood, with perfect arterial blood, produces electrical "phenomena evident and demonstrable."

Had Dr. Sansom gone a step farther he might have added: Is it not the functional speciality of the lungs to assimilate this electricity to the purposes of the great nervous centres? Are not these the reservoirs of this vital electricity? Vide letter, January, 1844.

The lungs at every respiration send vital electricity to the brain, "which has been thus assimilated to subserve the purposes of life."

That there is a close connexion between the functions of nervous matter, in the use of an electrical or magnetic fluid, cannot be disputed.

In the Comptes Rendus, Jan. 2nd, 1838, M. Becquerel made the following communication to the French Academy :"Dr. Prevost, of Geneva, has succeeded in magnetizing very delicate "soft iron needles, by placing them near to the nerves and perpen"dicular to the direction which he supposed the electric current took. "The magnetizing took place at the moment when on irritating the "spinal marrow a muscular contraction was effected in the animal."

The vital electricity generated by the torpedo, the gymnotus, and silurus electricus, who have special nervous organs for the secretion of this electricity, has been closely investigated.

According to the experiments made by Mr. Faraday, the gymnotus exhibits the electrical properties of producing chemical decomposition, making a magnet by induction, evolution of heat, electric spark. The shock of a single gymnotus was equal to a coated surface of 3500 square inches!

When it is considered that the secretion of vital electricity is effected in water - one of the best conductors - it does not require a very great stretch of the imagination in seeing how the chemical act of respiration is also attended with the secretion of vital electricity.

Humboldt says the gymnotus abounds in the small rivers which flow into the Orinoco. It employs its voltaic powers at the direction of the will, as other animals do their horns, teeth, or fangs to secure its prey or repel aggression. Hence horses and mules are attacked by them when forced to enter the streams. The quadrupeds suffer severely from the shocks they receive: the gymnotus becomes so exhausted as to be easily caught.

The fact of animals secreting electricity, which is subsequently used at the direction of their will, is a fact of great importance in connexion with the anaesthetic state induced by nervous congestion. What is the function of the brain? How are its desires conveyed to the various parts of the body?

The direction of will is the result of the education consequent on experience. When the infant first attempts to walk the whole attention or direction of will power is demanded; so much is this the case, that if the attention is distracted from the act of walking the limbs lose all power of supporting the body. After a short time the child walks and talks without apparent exercise of will in the act of walking. In fine, the communication of nerve power or fluid is established between the brain and the muscles to be moved. It is the use of this nerve force, through the agency of the will, which governs all our actions.