forming surgical operations, is distinctly set forth. Among a considerable number of Chinese works on the pharmacopoeia, medicine, and surgery, in the National Library at Paris, is one entitled Kou-kin-i-tong, or general collection of ancient and modern medicine, in fifty volumes quarto. Several hundred biographical notices of the most distinguished physicians in China are prefixed to this work. The following curious passages occur in the sketches of the biography of Hoa-tho, who flourished under the dynasty of Wei, between the years 220 and 230 of our era. "When he determined that it was necessary to employ acupuncture, he employed it in two or three. places; and so with the moxa if that was indicated by the nature of the affection to be treated. But if the disease resided in parts upon which the needle, moxa, or liquid medicaments could not operate,-for exam~le in the bones, or the marrow of the bones, in the stomach or the intestines, he gave the patient a preparation of hemp, (in the Chinese language mayo,) and after a few moments he became as insensible as if he had been drunk or dead. Then, as the case required, he performed operations, incisions, or amputations, and removed the cause of the malady; then he brought together and secured the tissues, and applied liniments. After a certain number of days, the patient recovered, without having experienced the slightest pain during the operation."

Almost a thousand years after the date of the unmistakable phrases quoted from Apuleius, according to the testimony of William of Tyre, and other chroniclers of the wars for the rescue of the holy sepulchre, and the fascinating narrative of Murco Polo, a state of anesthesia was induced for very different purposes. It became an instrument in the hands of bold and crafty impostors to perpetuate and extend the most terrible. fanaticism that the world has ever seen.

The employment of anaesthetic agents in surgical operations was not forgotten or abandoned during the period when they were pressed into the appalling service just described. In the thirteenth century, anesthesia was produced by inhalation of

an anodyne vapor, in a mode oddly forestalling the practices of the present day, which is described as follows in the surgical treatise of Theodoric, who died in 1298. It is the receipt for the "spongia somnifera," as it is called in the rubric:

"The preparation of a scent for performing surgical operations, according to Master Hugo. It is made thus:—Take of opium and the juice of unripe mulberry, of hyoscyamus, of the juice of the hemlock, of the juice of the leaves of the mandragora, of the juice of the woody ivy, of the juice of the forest mulberry, of the seeds of lettuce, of the seed of the burdock, which has large and round apples, and of the water-hemlock, each one ounce; mix the whole of these together in a brazen vessel, and then place a new sponge in it, and let the whole boil, and as long as the sun on the dog-days, till it (the sponge) consumes it all, and let it be boiled away in it. As often as there is need of it, place this same sponge in warm water for one hour, and let it be applied to the nostrils till he who is to be operated on (qui incidentus est) has fallen asleep; and in this state let the operation be performed (et sic fiat chirurgia). When this is finished, in order to rouse him, place another, dipped in vinegar, frequently to his nose, or let the juice of the roots of fenigreek be squirted into his nostrils. Presently he awakens."

Subsequent to Theodoric's time, we find many interesting and suggestive observations in the writings of Baptista Porta, Chamappe, Meissner, Dauriol, Haller, and Blandin. About half a century ago, Sir Humphry Davy thus hinted at the possibility that a pain-subduing gas might be inhaled :-"As nitrous oxide, in its extensive operation, appears capable of destroying physical pain, it may probably be used with advantage during surgical operations in which no great effusion of blood takes place." Baron Larrey, Napoleon's surgeon, after the battle of Eylau, found a remarkable insensibility in the wounded who suffered amputations, owing to the intense cold. This fact afterwards led to the application of ice as a local anæsthetic.

The former general belief that a degree of anaesthetic and prolonged sleep could be induced artificially by certain medicated potions and preparations is also shown by the frequency with which the idea is alluded to by the older poets and storytellers, and made part of the machinery in the popular romance and drama. In the history of Taliesin, (one of the antique Welsh tales contained in the Mabinogion,) Rhun is described as having put the maid of the wife of Elphin into a deep sleep with a powder put into her drink, and as having cut off one of her fingers when she was in this case of artificial anesthesia. Shakspeare, besides alluding more than once to the soporific property of mandragora, describes with graphic power in Romeo and Juliet, and in Cymbeline, the imagined effects of subtle distilled potions supposed capable of inducing, without danger, a prolonged state of death-like sleep or lethargy. And Thomas Middleton, in his tragedy of Women beware Women, published in 1657, pointedly and directly alludes in the following lines, to the practice of anæsthesia in ancient surgery :

Hippolito. Yes, my lord,

I make no doubt, as I shall take the course,

Which she shall never know till it be acted;

And when she wakes to honor, then she'll thank me for't.

I'll imitate the pities of old surgeons

To this lost limb; who, ere they show their art,

Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased part;

So out of love to her I pity most,

She shall not feel him going till he's lost;

Then she'll commend the cure.-Act iv. Sc. 1.

The following curious lines from Du Bartas, translated by Joshua Sylvester (?) are also well worth transcribing in this

connection.

Du Bartas died about the year 1590:

Even as a Surgeon minding off-to-cut
Som cureless limb; before in use he put
His violent Engins on the vicious member,
Bringeth his Patient in a senseless slumber:
And griefless then (guided by Use and Art)
To save the whole saws off th' infested part.

So God empal'd our Grandsire's (Adam) lively look,
Through all his bones a deadly chilness strook,
Siel'd-up his sparkling eyes with Iron bands,
Led down his feet (almost) to Lethe's sands;

In briefe, so numm'd his Soule's and Bodie's sense,
That (without pain) opening his side, from thence
He took a rib, which rarely He refin'd,

And thereof made the Mother of Mankind.

The history of anaesthetics is a remarkable illustration of the acknowledged fact that science has sometimes, for a long season, altogether lost sight of great practical thoughts, from being unprovided with proper means and instruments for carrying out those thoughts into practical execution; and hence it ever and anon occurs that a supposed modern discovery is only the rediscovery of a principle already sufficiently known to other ages, or to remote nations.

THE BOOMERANG.

The following paragraph in Pliny's Natural History, xxiv. 72, apparently refers to the Boomerang, with which, according to recent discoveries, the early people of the East were acquainted. See Bonomi's Nineveh, p. 136. Pliny, speaking of the account given by Pythagoras of the Aquifolia, either the holm-oak or the holly, says:—

Baculum ex eâ factum, in quodvis animal emissum, etiamsi citra ceciderit defectu mittentis, ipsum per sese cubitu proprius adlabi; tam præcipuam naturam inesse arbori.

(If a staff made of this wood, when thrown at any animal, from want of strength in the party throwing it, happens to fall short of the mark, it will fall back again towards the thrower of its own accord-so remarkable are the properties of this tree.)

The readings of the passage vary, cubitu being given in some MSS. for recubitu. Pythagoras probably heard of the baculum during his travels eastward, and being unable to understand how its formation could endow it with the singular property referred to, was induced to believe that this peculiarity was owing to the nature of the tree.

THE ATTRACTION OF GRAVITATION.

Both Dante and Shakspeare preceded Newton in knowledge of the principle, if not the law, of gravitation. In their anticipation of its discovery, the poets may not have deemed it other than a philosophic or poetic speculation. But the following passages attest earlier observations of a physical law than those of Pascal or Newton.

Shakspeare says in Troilus and Cressida:

and

But the strong base and building of my love

Is as the very centre of the earth

Drawing all things to it.-iv. 2.

True as earth to its centre.-iii. 2.

Three centuries before Shakspeare, Dante said in the Infer

no:

Thou dost imagine we are still

On the other side the central point, where I

Clasped the earth-piercing worm, fell cause of ill.
So far as I continued to descend,

That side we kept; but when I turned, then we

Had passed the point to which all bodies tend.

Canto xxxiv. 106-111.

EARLY INVENTION OF RIFLING.

In Sir Hugh Plat's Jewel-House of Art and Nature, 1653, (1st edition 1594) the 17th article runs thus:

How to make a Pistol, whose Barrel is 2 Foot in Length, to deliver a Bullet point blank at Eightscore.

A pistol of the aforesaid length, and being of the petronel bore, or a bore higher, having eight gutters somewhat deep in the inside of the barrel, and the bullet a thought bigger than the bore, and so rammed in at the first three or four inches at the least, and after driven down with the scouring stick, will deliver his bullet at such distance. This I had of an English gentleman of good note for an approved experiment.