raspberry brandy. Many excellent descriptions of claret have never found favour in England, and are comparatively unknown to us. An eminent French surgeon who visited England a short time ago, has publicly expressed in print his horror and abhorrence of our custom of drinking sweet champagne with mutton, and reserving fine costly Bourdeaux, at ten shillings a bottle, to sip over almonds and raisins, preserved fruits, grapes, and apples. Of course, the Bourdeaux then tastes sour and poor. A recent distinguished and sensible writer on vinology has penned a pretty rhapsody on the contrast between the feminine claret and the masculine Burgundy. To our mind claret is the agreeable companion, Burgundy the sound friend. One pleasant author, that most delightful of all characters, a well-read medical man, says that Bourdeaux is a model of purity and freshness, and resembles young, fresh, laughing, innocent girlhood. We may admire the rosebud and the snowdrop, but there is a place in our affections for something fuller, warmer, sounder, and more voluptuous. As is Jeremy Taylor to Bunyan, Aphrodite to a Woodnymph, the Olympic Jove to the ever youthful Apollo, so is Burgundy to Claret. During the reign of Louis the Fourteenth a great controversy raged in the Sorbonne among the black-capped doctors of the black and scarlet gowns, the bloodletters and cof fin makers of the days of Molière, their relentless enemy. A wild young student fresh from his Aristotle and reckless from his Hippocrates, had rashly asserted in his inaugural thesis, influenced by some strange local prejudice or temporary derangement, that the generous red wines of Burgundy were preferable to the creamy vintage of Champagne, which this young man with much learning declared was irritating to the nerves, and productive of many dangerous disorders. The faculty of medicine at Rheims, fired by this slander, took up the defence of Champagne, and expatiated on its liquid purity, its excellent brightness, its divine flavour, its paradisiacal perfume, its durability, and all its other rare qualities. This challenge soon roused another champion. A professor at the college of Beaune at once braced on his shield, pressed down his helmet, couched his lance, and spurred his charger to the fray. The Beaune man was very angry. His blood, half pure Burgundy, was tingling in his veins from the scalp of his bald head to the toes of his learned feet. He poured forth prose and verse, and pelted his antagonists without mercy -in fact, the celebrated Dr. Charles Coffin, the sagacious rector of the University of Beauvais, took the matter so much in snuff that he actually worked himself up to write a classical ode on the spirit, sparkle, life, and delicacy of his wine; and thus the doctor with the dismal name sipped and sang Latin verses, which may be translated, with gross incorrectness, by the parish bellman, somehow thus: Bubbles of joy are springing Up to my smiling mouth; To pour on the votive shrine. For sending me down this wine. Erasmus, worn with vigil and study, attributed his restoration to health, to having drunk liberally of Burgundy-a pleasant medicine, truly. In an epistle to Le Grand d'Aussy he says, with the warmheartedness of one who has well drunk: "Ought not he who first taught us the art to make this Burgundian wine-should he not rather be considered as one who has given us life, than the mere hander to us of a liquor ?" Dr. Druitt says that an eminent English wine-merchant was once dining with a wine congress at Macon. Our Englishman, with the national wish to make all things pleasant strongly upon him, propounded to the assembly in congress on the new vintages his three stale prejudices against Burgundy. First. That Burgundy would not keep. The answers were conclusive and irrefutable. They first brought him veritable Burgundy, a hundred years old, attenuated by time, but still sound at the core. They then brought him sound honest Burgundy, that had travelled round the world. Lastly, they bade him inquire of all the two hundred Burgundy growers and Burgundy drinkers round the table which of them had ever had the gout. Lucky Englishmen of the nineteeth century! you can renounce the old Port black dose and the Sherry brandy of bygone centuries, and you can get a nice, clean, light, pleasant-flavoured Chablis at eighteen shillings, a full, round Pouilly at twenty-four shillings, and a most cheering and honest Beaujolais at four-andtwenty. Let us draw up the bottles with the sloping shoulders, the beauties of Burgundy, the pearls of the wine merchant's seraglio-the choicest jewels of the London Docks. First comes that fine wine Beaune, which grows on either side of the high road running from Dijon to Chalon-sur-Saône, which runs through the immortalised towns of Beaune and Nuits. The dust from the wheels of the cumbrous diligences rests on those grapes like a white bloom, but they are none the worse for that. The famed Clos Vougeot is grown in an enclosure of one hundred and twelve acres, formerly a convent garden, to the right beyond the village. Further on is Vosnes, a hamlet whose wines are rich in colour and perfect for perfume, flavour, aroma, and spirit. The Romanée-Conti is not approached even by the Romanée-St.-Vivant, the Vivant is only rivalled by Richebourg, the Richebourg only by La Tache. This amiable family of wines of the most liquid ruby, and the most delicious bouquet, combine the most ethereal lightness and delicacy with the most royal richness and fulness of body. They have all a peculiar vinous pungency. About a league from Vosnes is the town of Nuits, with a small piece of ground only six hectares in extent, which produces the St. George, so famous for flavour, bouquet, and delicacy. Close to Aloxe is the vineyard of Beaune, a well-known and estimable wine, and not far from there grows the Volnay, with its light grateful aroma, delicate tint, and scented flavour of the raspberry. Not far off is made our old friend the Pomard, with a deeper colour and more body than Volnay, and therefore more adapted to keep in warm climates. The white Burgundies are unjustly neglected, for it is agreed by all good judges that they maintain the highest rank among the white wines of France, and as one great authority boldly asserts "are not inferior to the red either in aroma or flavour." Mont Rachet stands highest among these for flavour and perfume. Meursalt, Chablis, Pouilly, Fussy, Goutte d'or, are also all eminent Burgundians, but they do not keep so well as the red. The white wines of the Côte d'Or have their weaknesses; while the red Burgundies of the first quality keep for twelve or fifteen years, the white mature at three or four years old, but are apt to cloud and thicken as the years roll over them. of rum partly consoled him for the disappointment of Waterloo. St. George used to be held the most perfect of the Burgundies, for every aristocratic quality, ever after it was prescribed to Louis the Fourteenth, as a restorative in his illness of 1680. Bourdeaux for the blood, Burgundy for the nerves, Dr. Druitt says. A great deal used to be said of the Vinum Theologicum, or wine grown in clerical vineyards, but no clerical vineyards have yet surpassed the best growths of Burgundy. They are perfectly adapted to our English use. They want only a moderately temperate cellar, and a warm room to drink them in. They won't mix, and therefore they rather baffle the wicked adulterators. PAINLESS OPERATIONS. Ir is little more than twenty years since the discovery was made by Dr. Wells of Hartford, America, acting on the suggestion of Sir Humphry Davy, that nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, possessed the power of producing temporary unconsciousness. Two years later the same powers were found to exist in sulphuric ether by Dr. Morton, and more recently in chloroform by Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh. It would be hard to estimate how greatly these discoveries have affected the art of operative surgery; and not that branch alone, but the whole of medical science, and how inestimable a boon they have conferred on suffering humanity. In the days when such eminent surgeons as Sir Astley Cooper and Mr. Liston were in their acme of fame, and whilst anaesthetics were unknown, the field of operative surgery was much restricted. Operations usually were avoided if they could not be performed with great rapidity, for there was danger from the restlessness and severe distress of the patient. At the present time not only is the surgeon with It is a cruel pity that with such natural and such anesthetics as chloroform, sulphuric ether, changeless advantages as the Burgundy vine- &c., at his command able to reduce the worst growers enjoy, they neglect to make the most cases of dislocation and fracture with a certain of them. They gather the grape clusters in degree of ease, or to accomplish, without inthe Côte d'Or in a coarse and reckless way. flicting pain, the tedious dissection, which They tread them before they throw them into is to relieve a sufferer; but he can undertake the vat. They let the wine ferment with no with comparative safety many operations never other preparation than removing the stalks. thought of in former times. The effect of such Finally they gather during the hottest sunshine. anaesthetics upon the body when they are Many of the Burgundy vineyards have grand inhaled, is, firstly, to render it unconscious of traditions. The wine of Beaune, according to pain; secondly, to relax the voluntary muscles, Petrarch, was the chief cause that kept the and to paralyse the nerves of sensation, by Popes so long at Avignon. Beaune was then inducing a state of the brain like intoxicathought twice as good as Romanée-Conti. tion. Long before the important discoveries Chambertin, to the south of Dijon, is a gene- regarding the properties of nitrous oxide, rous and illustrious wine, of fuller body and made by Sir Humphry Davy, it was thought more durability than Romanée. Louis the that there must exist somewhere in nature, a Fourteenth is said to have taken it into his means of so paralysing the nerves of sensation, favour, and to have quaffed it in the company that some of the slight surgical operations of Colbert and Madame Maintenon, Molière, could be performed without causing pain to the and La Vallière. It was also the favourite patient. Nothing, however, appears to have draught of Napoleon; with this he cheered him- been established in proof of such a theory, self after the great cannonades of Austerlitz until the experiments made by Sir Humphry and Eylau; but there is a report that a bottle | Davy towards the end of the last century, upon nitrous oxide gas, discovered by Priestley, 1774. In those experiments he fully ascertained the exhilarating property of the gas, and to some extent its power to render the body insensible to pain; for on one occasion having suffered much from the cutting of a "wisdom tooth," and "whilst the inflammation was at its greatest height," he says:-" I inhaled at intervals the gas, and found after three or four full inspirations, the pain left me, but on ceasing to inspire it, I quickly recovered my senses, and with those the acute pain of the gum, not diminished in severity by the experiment." method of preparing the gas was by heating the nitrate of ammonia in a glass retort, great care being taken to apply the flame gradually, so as not to crack the retort, and also not to raise the temperature above five hundred degrees Fahrenheit, as otherwise the nitric oxide-a powerful poison-would be given off along with the nitrous oxide. The gas, as it came over, was passed through water containing a solution of the persulphate of iron, and was ultimately secured in a large india-rubber bag, from which, by means of a tube, the patient inhaled it. From continual practice in the preparation and administration of the gas, many improveAfter this, which may be said to have been ments were made by Dr. Wells, and in the latter a very good proof of its temporary anaesthetic part of the year 1846, he undertook a journey power, he does not appear to have continued to Boston, to consult many of the eminent his research; although he did think it probable, judging from his experience in the case of the inflamed gum, that the nitrous oxide might be used in slight surgical operations. From the laboratory of this illustrious chemist the gas found its way into every other throughout the kingdom; and for many years its property of producing a transient and very pleasant excitement was exhibited at chemical lectures. It was not, however, until the year 1844 that its power to secure a complete insensibility to pain was discovered and truly established by Dr. Wells-an able American dentist with a faculty for scientific observation-and in the following manner: In the December of 1844 he attended, in his native town, a lecture on chemistry, delivered by Mr. Colton, and, amongst other experiments, nitrous oxide gas was administered to several of the gentlemen present. The effect of the gas on different individuals was very remarkably shown; some were greatly depressed or sent off into a profound sleep, whilst others were raised to the highest pitch of excitement, and were cutting capers in a very ludicrous manner. One of the caperers became quite unmanageable, and hurt himself against the benches of the room. When this gentleman had regained his consciousness, he was asked by Dr. Wells whether the wounds in his legs did not hurt him, as the blood was flowing freely from them. He replied that he was not aware of having received any injury. As it appeared that the gentleman had been, whilst under the gas, either wholly or partially insensible to pain, Dr. Wells determined, on the morrow, to inhale the gas himself, and to have a tooth drawn by way of experiment. Next day, therefore, he procured the help of Mr. Colton, who administered the gas to him. It took little more than half a minute to bring him thoroughly under its influence. The dentist then pulled out the tooth, and Dr. Wells said, on recovering his senses, "It did not pain me more than the prick The efficacy of sulphuric ether as an anesthetic of a pin." After this discovery, many operations was afterwards established by numberless operawere performed with the aid of the gas to per- tions, which were performed without mishap fectly establish it, and with unvarying suc- from its administration. Such a boon to mancess. During the next two years, not only was kind was not long in arousing the medical world used exclusively by Dr. Wells in his practice of England and France, and within a few months at Hartford, but it had spread to the princi- after the first use of sulphuric ether, at the pal cities throughout the United States. The Massachusetts General Hospital, numerous ex surgeons of that city, as to the advisability of trying it in surgical operations. Having had a conference with Dr. Marcy, it was agreed, that, in a surgical operation which the latter gentleman had to perform, Dr. Wells should administer the gas. The gas was accordingly administered in presence of many of the most distinguished medical gentlemen in Boston, and the result answered every expectation of the discoverer; the patient being some few minutes under operation, and for the whole time perfectly insensible to any pain. Shortly after this another operation, amputation of the thigh, was performed by Dr. Marcy, and the gas administered again by Dr. Wells. The same success attended it. As the gas gained standing in the art of surgery, so its many disadvantages, arising from the difficulty of preparing it, became apparent, and many trials were made by scientific men to discover a substance, which would answer the same purpose, and be more readily obtained. This substance, in the form of sulphuric ether, was brought forward in September, 1846, by Dr. Morton, a gentleman living in Boston, of great standing in the dental profession. The first case in which he used it, was in the extraction of a firmly rooted bicuspid tooth, the ether being placed on a handkerchief, and given to the patient to inhale. There was not much alteration in the pulse, and no relaxation of the muscles. He recovered in a minute and knew nothing of what had been done to him. The success of this operation, induced Dr. Morton to apply to Dr. Warren, connected with the Massachusetts General Hospital, in order to try the effect of ether vapour in surgery. It was given in an important operation performed by the latter gentleman very soon after, and the ether having been breathed during the whole time the patient was throughout entirely insensible; yet the recovery occupied but a few minutes. periments were tried with both that and the residing in New York. Its use has been pernitrous oxide gas; the latter was but spar- fected, and it is found to have such great advaningly used in England, and sulphuric ether tages for short operations that Mr. Cotton, in soon stood alone, continuing to be used through- conjunction with Dr. J. Allen, a dentist of New out the country, until the discovery of the York, established an anesthetic institution for anaesthetic property of chloroform, by Dr. Simp- the extraction of teeth, by the use of the gas, son, about a year afterwards. The qualities of and each person operated upon entered his chloroform soon caused it to supersede sul-name in a register kept of the cases. Up to phuric ether, which had a very disagreeable January, 1867, the number of names was sevenodour, and was highly inflammable, so much so, teen thousand six hundred and one, and in no that cases had occurred in which it had ignited, single case had the nitrous oxide produced any and had done much hurt to the patient inhaling alarming symptoms. From Boston the pracit; but chloroform is not inflammable. From tice has extended into other large cities, and is that time up to the present, chloroform has rapidly spreading all over the country. In been used exclusively by English surgeons; surgery, too, nitrous oxide is again used in many but its use has not been without fatal acci- American hospitals. Its condemnation in Engdents, which apparently within these last few land appears to have been premature and withyears have increased in number. The per-cent-out sufficient cause. Some of the chief dentists age of fatal cases is not greater than ten years ago, but where it was administered to one person then, it is now administered to many scores, and this for very trifling operations. Other serious symptoms besides the direct anaesthetic influence on the system may arise. From the frequent use of artificial teeth it occasionally happens, that these are swallowed during the inhalation of chloroform or ether. In one instance, a lady who had inhaled ether, was apparently in a dying state, respiration having ceased, and the pulse being just perceptible; this aroused the attention of the surgeon, and upon passing his fingers down the throat to admit a current of air to the larynx, he discovered an entire upper set of artificial teeth, closely forced down on the glottis. These having been withdrawn, it was only after persistence in the use of the usual remedies employed to recover a person from asphyxia (as in drowning), that the regular course of respiration and circulation was restored. in London have been reviving the experiments made on its first introduction. The gas has been administered at the dental hospital by improved methods, and with great success, the patients being brought fully under its influence in about forty seconds, and about the same time being taken for recovery. The nitrous oxide gas has one great advantage, which is, that it does not produce the unpleasant after symptoms following the use of chloroform or ether; but this may be compensated by more serious disadvantages, which experiment will alone show. The difficulty of preparation will prevent its use in the army, where chloroform must continue to be used, on account of its portability and easy application; but in hospitals, where these objections are not of such serious moment-if success attend it-it may supersede the use of the valuable, but rather dangerous, anaesthetic chloroform. THE NORTHENVILLE ELECTION. OUR SIDE. Chloroform is generally administered by means of a sponge, or flannel, upon which the liquid is poured, or else the vapour, with a certain I HAVE seen life as an electioneering agent. percentage of atmospheric air, is forced into a This was nearly my first case. One of the bag, from which, by means of a tube, inhalation members for the town of Northenville died is carried on. We have been much indebted suddenly, and a gentleman of the Mauve party, these last few years to the extensive researches who had long been anxious to get into parlia of Dr. Richardson, the inventor of the "Anæs-ment, offered himself to the electors. Not thetic spray producer." By this instrument a being able to secure on the spot the services continual stream of absolute ether is directed of a good canvassing agent, he wrote to a against the part of the body under the exa- celebrated solicitor in London, who offered me mination of the surgeon, and the rapid evapora- the job, and gave me my instructions. On my tion of the ether from the surface completely first interview with the gentleman who was to freezes that portion, and renders it insensible be my principal, I learnt what his intentions to the knife. If we go back to the discovery and wishes were, and next day began work. of sulphuric ether, we find that in America, as in England, that anaesthetic quickly took the place of the nitrous oxide gas, but not to the utter exclusion of the nitrous oxide, which still was given in extremely dangerous cases, as to persons in the last stage of consumption, &c., and where the surgeon feared to risk ether. In dentistry, too, its use had declined. But in 1863 it was again brought into active service by Dr. J. H. Smith, a dentist of Connecticut, and Mr. Cotton, the gentleman who delivered the chemical lecture at Hartford 1844, The member who was just dead belonged to the Carmine party in politics, whereas, as I said before, the new candidate for the seat was a Mauve. The Ministry of the day were of the great Carmine party; the Mauves were decidedly unpopular in Northenville; and our adversary had much local influence. My candidate was very rich, had a popular manner, and was a director of large iron mines not very far from Northenville. Our opponent might promise that he would endeavour to oblige voters by getting them post office clerk ships worth seventy pounds. But my principal date for the honour of representing them in had in his own gift situations worth twice that parliament. amount in the Clary Iron works. There were many electors, and these not the poorest, who had pestered the late member with applications for government situations for their sons, brothers, cousins, and friends. Not more than a fifth of them had he been able, for very shame, to ask for, and hardly one in twenty of them had he been able to obtain. If we could only manage to persuade these gentlemen that Our Side was likely to come into office, we should thrive. My first care was to secure as many of the public-houses as I could, and before I had been twenty-four hours in the town ten of these establishments had in their windows printed placards, on which appeared, in mauve (our colour), with letters six inches long at least, the words, VOTE FOR MELLAM! MR. MELLAM'S COMMITTEE ROOM. Each publican was, in the first place, to have fifty pounds for the use of his house as a committee-room. He was to invite many to his house, and all who entered were to drink as much as possible. If any one declined to take more liquor, he was to be invited to drink at the expense of the landlord, who was instructed on all such occasions to say that he "would stand a pint," or a quart, or glasses "hot with," all round, as the case might be, just to drink Success to Mellam and the Mauves. The private bargain with the landlords was that all such liquors as were consumed were to be charged to our committee, and that the bill would be settled without any scrutiny whatever. The last clause of the bargain, but by no means the least interesting to the publicans, was the one in which I privately bet each of them (through sub-agents) one hundred pounds to one pound that Mr. Mellam would not be returned for the borough of Northenville. If he was not returned, each publican would have to pay the sum of twenty shillings; but if he was returned, I paid one hundred pounds. Fair betting is not bribery. From generalities the address went on to speak of the special and actual wants and desires of the borough. The Hougoumont of our position was a purely local piece of business, which fortunately for our side, the Mauve principles enabled us to support. There was, and had been for some five hundred years, an institution in Northenville known as the Cottagers' Almshouses. These consisted of twenty small cottages, each containing two rooms and a kitchen, with a small plot of garden behind. They had been built in the old monkish days, and the founder had left a farm of more than a hundred acres, the rents of which were to support the score of poor persons who inhabited the houses. The original intention of the founder was that in these almshouses there should be maintained twenty cottagers of the neighbourhood who had become incapable of supporting themselves. They and their wives-if they were married-were to receive also a small stipend every month for food, fuel, and clothes. The trustees of the charity were the mayor and town council of the place. But the value of the estate left for the support of the poor people had increased, and the question was what to do with the surplus funds, which now amounted to some seven or eight thousand pounds. Some maintained that more poor people ought to be supported. This was the Carmine view of the question, as represented in the columns of the Northenville Independent. On the other hand, the Mauves maintained that as this great increase to the funds of a local institution had been brought about by the care of the mayor and town council, the money ought to be spent on works of public benefit for the good of the whole town of Northenville. At the time when Mr. Mellam came forward to contest the borough, the controversy respecting the cottagers' almshouses was very warm indeed. Our friends of the Mercury were loud in praise of Mr. Mellam, and "hoped that this well-known fellow-countryman of the electors would be returned for When the public-houses had been secured, the borough, if for no other reason in order I began to work at what may be termed that the wretched faction which had by the legitimate business of the election. There means of bribery and corruption so long miswere two local newspapers- one strongly represented the town of Northenville, might Mauve, the other Carmine double-dyed. Of not be able to coerce their fellow-citizens by course we favoured our own print, and not imposing additional rates, and by the perpetraonly published Mr. Mellam's address in the tion of a job which would saddle the people of Northenville Mercury, but also sent in long that important borough with a burden which rigmaroles as advertisements, which, although they might perhaps never be able to shake they were merely "copy" from the London off." papers, and of no use to our candidate, were paid for at the fullest rates chargeable for the most expensive advertisements. Before leaving London, I had ascertained who were the agents in town of the other side, and a ten pound note judiciously beMr. Mellam's address appealed to the stowed upon a clerk in their office (betting Mauve feelings of the FREE AND INDEPEN-him also one hundred pounds to one pound DENT ELECTORS OF NORTHENVILLE, and com- that my man would not be returned), kept me menced by declaring that it was "with a alive to all that was going on in that part of deep sense of responsibility" that Mr. Mellam the enemy's camp. I had arrived at Northensubmitted himself to their notice as a candi- ville on a Saturday night, and on Sunday morn |