Conduct of Britain-Queen Pomare.

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interposition was, in these three islands, hoped for in vain. When tariff's and boundaries are in question, it can speak with a voice that commands attention; but, if nothing dearer than religion and liberty be at stake-if it be only a small band of British subjects, toiling for the good of mankind, in a distant island, who are exposed to persecution, plunder, and slaughter-then the greatest possible care must be taken not to speak above a whisper, for fear of disturbing the enteinte cordiale !

Poor Queen Pomare, harassed beyond endurance, at last yielded to terror;--" The night was passed in sobs and tears. Towards morning her sufferings increased; and, at length, she signed the fatal document; then, bursting into a flood of tears, she took her eldest son, aged six years, in her arms, and exclaimed My child, I have signed away thy birthright.' After another hour of indescribable pangs, she was delivered of her fourth child. In fact, by protection she was dethroned. Though the French left her an empty title of Queen of the Interior, Moerenhout, the royal commissioner of Louis Philippe, was king of Tahiti.”

When this monstrous iniquity was finished, there was great rejoicing among the gallant French, and the priests lifted up their hands in thanksgiving to "our Lady of the Faith."

"As at the Gambier Islands, before the obscene indulgences on board the Astrolabe and Zelée, and as at Tahiti, after the debauchery of the officers and crew of the Artémise, so now, religion, was made to mingle with and to sanction the dissoluteness. A Romish chapel was opened on the Sunday. M. Caret, vicar-general, officiated, and the band from the Reine Blanche accompanied the high mass. Yes, the same band to which crowds of lost women, enticed on board the ship of war to insult the Protestant missionaries, had listened day after day, they saw ranged before the high altar, and its music they heard blending with the chants and prayers of Romish priests! The confederacy was in its glory-the joyous notes with which it celebrated the triumph of wrong, and the installation of the agents of Picpus, were to them the requiem of Protestant heresy and British influence at Tahiti."-Wilkes, p. 128.

We conclude with the peroration of Mr. Mark Wilkes, whose excellent reflections on this painful subject are expressed with equal force and beauty:

"All that has followed the French Protectorate; the acts of dethronement and of assumption of the islands, and their disavowal, when too late; the tyranny of the commissioner and governors; the forced retirement of the queen on board a British ketch, the Basilisk; the expulsion of the British consul; the insulting conduct of d'Aubigny and Bruat, towards the commander of Her Majesty's ship, the Cormorant; the bombardings, conflagrations, and slaughters, ordered and effected; the dispersion of the English missionaries; the ill-treatment of several captains of British merchant vessels; the outrage on Lieu

tenant Hunt-all these facts, of which the history and the sequel are yet to come, are so many inevitable consequences of the long laid plans of Romish and French confederate policy for the possession of Tahiti, and for the extirpation of heresy from Oceania. That confederacy, its origin, character, progress, and success, it was the design of this review of events to expose.

"Whatever may have been thought or said in France, of this success, the news from the Pacific has given a blow to the moral power of the government of that country, under which it still staggers, and from which, instead of recovering with the lapse of time, it is doomed to sink lower and more feeble, till reparation shall have been publicly and honourably made. No jubilations, no excuses, no denials; not even the apologies or collusiveness of other governments, can stifle or divert the public conscience, everywhere enlightened and decided. In the midst of festivities and ovations, however apparently cordial, and however splendid, a hand-writing throws a lurid light; and the words TAHITI and PROTECTION, unspoken, but not unseen, give the hue of moral death to the brilliant show.

"What reparation can be made? What has France, or its sovereign, rich as he is in this world's wealth, to offer, in compensation for the evil it has achieved, the social misery it has inflicted on an unoffending people? What to the English missionaries, and to the Christian Society which sent them to Tahiti, and sustained them during fifty years, by its sacrifices and its prayers? What to the natives, for their loss of religious peace, moral dignity, domestic comfort, national prosperity and independence? What to the royal family, and to the sovereign, for insult, deprivation, expulsion from the throne and the home of her fathers and of her children; for the success of treason, the murder of many of her people, and the inoculation of her states with the corrosive virus of deadly and infectious vices? What to the world, for the perverting example of political profligacy; of irreligious, anti-social, contemptuous violation of the principles, that all states, and that human nature ought to respect and maintain? France has nothing to offer, that can compensate to any of these for any portion of the evil it has produced. Refuse, indeed, the sovereignty of Tahiti, but keep the protectorate,—and that, because the same iniquitous power may be exercised under a more convenient form!-Is this to give compensation for the past?-Even were France to give back to Pomare her full, and rightful, and unforfeited independence; to withdraw, at once and for ever, from her soil, the wretched agents who have polluted it, a debt would remain for past aggressions and contamination, that the nation, great and powerful' as it is, were it repentant and sincere, could never discharge. It only remains for it to do, and for others to require, what can be done; when that has been done, or, at least, when an honest desire to attempt so much, has been displayed, then, and not till then, can France expect to be received to the fellowship of truly civilized, virtuous, and honourable society."

Painless Operations in Surgery.

169

ART. VII.—1. A Treatise on the Inhalation of the Vapour of Ether, &c. By J. ROBINSON, Surgeon-Dentist, &c. London, 1847. 2. Notes on the Inhalation of Sulphuric Ether, in the Practice of Midwifery. By J. Y. SIMPSON, Professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, 1847. 3. The Medical Periodicals, passim.

AT first sight, this subject may seem to lie beyond the strict range of our Journal, and to belong rather to those periodicals which treat exclusively of physic and surgery. But a moment's reflection makes it very plain how this is a matter which touches all members of the human family alike; or, if there be any difference, patients are more interested than practitioners-the laity more than the profession-the mass more than the medical section of mankind. No doubt, it is a boon to the surgeon to know that he can achieve what he knows to be essential for his patient's welfare, without, at the same time, inflicting on him an instant's pain. He will be very thankful to find a fellow-being placid, and calm, and motionless, under an operation which used to cause much torture, as evinced too plainly by writhings, and shoutings, and groans. His hand is all the steadier; his head all the more cool and collected; his feelings are comparatively untouched; and his heart, all thankful, is incomparably at ease. But surely the boon is greater far to the victim-to the suffering portion of humanity. Injury and disease often require operations of dread severity; fearful in themselves, and still more fearful in anticipation. In war, the bravest hearts, who cared not for the foeman's steel, and scarce felt the wound it made, have yet shrunk back from the friendly knife which in kindness had to follow. In disease, the sternest minds, and the most possessed, have looked death steadily in the face, day by day, week by week, and month by month; they have reasoned calmly of that which they believed to be surely carrying them onward to their grave; and yet they have turned, trembling and appalled, from the thought of an operation which a turn of their malady may have rendered expedient or imperative. Many a wise, as well as many a bold man has refused to submit to what his own conviction told him was essential to his safety; and many a valuable life has thus, in one sense, been thrown away, which otherwise might have been saved, or at least prolonged. And why? Simply because, in the operations of surgery of a graver kind, there has hitherto been such cruel pain as frail humanity, even of the highest class, is fain to shrink from. We remember the case of a gallant admiral--one of the bravest hearts that ever beat, in a service whose

men of every grade are, to a proverb, dauntless-who, in the opening of his distinguished career, had been engaged in cutting out an enemy's frigate. From the gunboat, he climbed up the ship's steep side, and, foremost of his crew, had reached the bulwarks, when, receiving a stunning blow, he fell backwards into his boat again, striking his back violently on the tholpin. Many years afterwards, a tumour had grown on the injured part; and at length, the admiral-grey, and bent in years-found it advisable that this growth should be removed. The man that never feared death in its most appalling form, while in the discharge of duty, now shrank from the surgeon's knife; the removal, contemplated with a feeling almost akin to fear, was long deferred; and at length, half-stupified by opium though he was, a most unsteady patient did he prove during the operation. Women-mothers -who, for their kindred, have been at any time ready to sacrifice their lives, by watching and privation, in loathsome and tainted chambers of infectious disease-have, when themselves become victims of that which they know requires a surgical operation, and which, without this, they are well assured, must miserably consume them away;—even these noble minds, resolute in the fear of death, have yet quailed under the fear of suffering; they have studiously concealed their malady from their nearest friends, and deliberately preferred the misery of a fatal, and unchecked, and ever-gnawing cancer, to the apprehended torture of an operation, temporary though it be. We repeat it; even the best portions of humanity have an instinctive dread and shrinking from the pain of deliberate cutting of the living flesh. And does it not concern us all, that, in God's good providence, a remedy has sprung up for this?—that now a fair prospect is afforded of even the most dreaded of these dire proceedings being performed during a happy unconsciousness of the patient? Not merely with little suffering, but absolutely with none.

Than the subject at the beginning of our page, we can conceive nothing more catholic ;-it affects the whole human race. Even editors and critics must stoop to arrange themselves among the benefited; and in this question may well say-confessing their humanity, and throwing aside for once the almost suprahuman obscurity in which they love to dwell-" Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto."

We do not propose to enter fully into the subject of Etherization, but shall content ourselves with little more than a narrative of the principal events connected with it; making also some observations regarding the application of the discovery, which it may be at once useful and interesting for the general public to

know.

It has always been a leading object in practical surgery, to di

minish as far as possible the amount of suffering during the manipulations of that art. Accordingly, in some operations, tight pressure has been made above the part to be cut, applied by a tourniquet, by bandaging, or by the powerful grasp of an assistant. Sometimes, but more frequently in obedience to the urgent request of the patient than of the operator's own free will, opium, or some other narcotic, has been given previously to the hour of operation, in the hope of producing thereby a comparative deadness to pain; always, however, with an imperfect and unsatisfactory result as to the object sought to be attained, and almost always with the effect of subsequent disadvantage accruing, in the form of headach, feverishness, or other general disorder. Each individual operation has had its details oftentimes considered and changed in the hope of accelerating the speed of operating, while safety might be retained; and many ingenious instruments have been invented with the like object in view; surgeons seeking in every way to arrive at a due combination of the "tuto et celeriter:" always giving to the former the first place in importance, and yet, perhaps, pursuing the latter with a greater earnestness and perseverance. In this, it is gratifying to know that surgery has, of late years, made no inconsiderable advance. The operation for stone, for example, used to average many minutes in duration, now it seldom occupies above three or four; often it is completed in two; and, withal, the average mortality is found rather abated than otherwise; the search for the "celeriter" has been successful, and the "tuto" has been retained. In like manner, the old method of amputating by "circular incision" has been, in a great measure, superseded by the modern operation by "flaps," and the cutting procedure, in consequence, has been abridged of fully one-half its period of duration; while better stumps are formed, and the casualties affecting life are at least as few. Still, the results of such attempts, however successful, have been but imperfect; pain has still been inflicted, with all its intensity unbroken; the saving has merely been as to the tortures actually endured whilst under the knife, and that not with reference to acuteness or amount, but only as to the term of duration. And furthermore, no slight evil may well be supposed to have occurred, in the temptation to hurry in operating, held out, more especially, to those surgeons whose duty led them to public exhibition of their professional skill. A false criterion of operative power was apt to be raised-not merely in the vulgar mind; the dexterity of the hand was apt to be estimated according to the rapidity of its movement; the judgment and tact of the head, which planned an operation, were apt to be gauged by the time occupied in performance; and, in consequence, the surgeon may not unfrequently have been urged, almost uncon