Mysteries of the Vital Element in Connexion With Dreams, Somnambulism, Trance, Vital Photography, Faith and Will, Anaesthesia, Nervous Congestion and Creative Function - Modern Spiritualism Explained #233614

That the development of modern Anaesthesia should have been closely associated with that condition of insensibility induced by the mesmeric process or nervous congestive state of brain, cannot excite astonishment when it is remembered that the first authentically recorded anaesthetic surgical Operation was performed as early as April, 1829, by the eminent French surgeon, Jules Cloquet, who removed the cancerous breast of a lady who had been rendered unconscious, in view of the Operation being painless. It was the knowledge of this fact which induced me to repeat in 1841, the nervous congestive or mesmeric comatose state in a child only twenty-two months, SO that a fungus, involving the globe of the eye, might be extirpated painlessly. The entire success of this wonderful Operation at the time, on a child of such tender age, put the question of producing an anaesthetic state beyond the possibility of a doubt, and encouraged further research. Prior to this, in December, 1839, I had reduced a dislocation of the femur, in a negro who had been rendered anaesthetic by the inhalation of the vapours from alcohol. In 1885, I, when a student at the London University College, was rendered unconscious by the inhalation Of ether, in the chemical lecture room of Dr. Turner.