Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/660



evolved from the fumes of the Lycoperdon giganteum, or common puff-ball. The fumes as thus evolved have been employed for centuries past by the common people for narcotizing bees before taking the honey from the hive. A portion of the substance being burned under the hive, the bees, inhaling the fumes, fall into a deep sleep, during which time they are unconsciously deprived of their industrious earnings. I was so struck with the perfect action of these fumes after being shown one of these experiments, that, in 1854, I introduced the fumes for anaesthetic purposes. Purified by being passed through water, they produced the most rapid narcotism, under which many operations were performed painlessly on the inferior animals. The question was the character and chemical nature of the agent in the fumes which produced the anæsthesia. The late Dr. John Snow, so well known for his immense labors on anæsthetics, and the late Mr. Thornton Herepath, one of our most promising chemists, were each separately engaged in discovering the concealed gas or vapor. Snow and Herepath simultaneously, but by quite different methods of research, arrived at the fact that the narcotic present was carbonic oxide,