- ciated by our young friend, if one may judge by the quantity he imbibes,
tends to render the information obtained, as one may say almost at first hand, not so absolutely trustworthy as a man of fact is accustomed to desire.
After a due survey then of the varied sources from which most people obtain information respecting the topics in question, and after some observation of the character and quality of the knowledge so acquired, we have formed the deliberate conclusion that they possess very erroneous, and very inadequate notions about the nature of a surgical operation. No doubt all admire the sang-froid and skill, possession of which is necessary to make a good surgical operator—qualities, by the way, which are perhaps more frequently developed by training, than found already existing as a natural inheritance. But it is germane to our purpose to remember that everybody has a direct practical concern in the existence of an available supply of the necessary talent to meet a certain demand on the part of the body politic, for no one knows how soon his own personal necessities may not be such as to give him the strongest possible interest in its exercise: a demand that is absolutely inevitable;—for be assured that, without any wish to alarm you, gentle reader, Mr Nelson will, if requested to make the calculation, inform us at once what the numerical chances are that your own well-proportioned nether limb will, or will not, fall before the surgeon's knife, or that that undoubtedly hard and well-developed cranium may not yet be scientifically explored by "trepan" or "trephine." He will estimate with unerring certainty the probability (to nine places of decimals, if you demand it) that your own fair person may become the subject of some unpleasing excrescence; and also what the chances are that you must seek the surgeon's aid to remove it. While Mr. Buckle will stoutly maintain, and you will find it hard to gainsay him, that, given the present conditions of existence, a certain ascertainable number of tumours, broken legs, and natural-born deformities will regularly make their appearance every year among the human family. And he will probably add, that it is perfectly within the province of possibility to calculate, if we had all the required data, the exact number of individuals who have the requisite courage to submit to operation; as of those who will not have heart to do so, and who will inevitably die without benefit of surgery; together with the exact percentage to the population of those who will, and who will not, put faith in the blessed boon of chloroform.
It is a blessed boon; and in olden times the possessor of such a secret would have been the most potent wizard of which the earth has yet heard tell. What miracles might not have been performed by it! What dogmas might not have been made divine and true by its influence! Happy was it that those great powers, the magic of chemical and electrical discovery, have been brought to light in a time when they can be used mainly to enlighten and bless, and not to darken and oppress mankind!
But that word chloroform is happily significant that it is to no scene of suffering that we would introduce our readers. There is no need to shrink,
