sewing machine for the purpose
of lightening the labors of his wife; and she used it for some years
before some other genius invented it, or some traveler stole the idea
and improved on it.

Dr. Crawford W. Long, in 1842, when twenty-seven years of age, performed
the first painless surgical operation that is known to history. In 1839,
Velpeau of Paris declared that the attempts to find some agent by which
to prevent pain in surgical operations was nothing less than chimerical;
and as late as 1846 Sir Benjamin Brodie said, "Physicians and surgeons
have been looking in vain, from the days of Hippocrates down to the
present time, for the means of allaying or preventing bodily pain." And
yet three years after the declaration of Velpeau, and four years before
the statement of Sir Benjamin Brodie, the young Georgia physician had
removed a tumor from the neck of a patient, and that patient had felt no
pain.

The story is very interesting. Dr. Crawford W. Long was born in
Danielsville, Madison County, Ga., on the 1st of November, 1815. He
graduated at the University of Georgia, studied medicine, and graduated
at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. He then
went to Jefferson, Jackson County, where he opened an office, and
practiced medicine for many years.

[Illustration: Laughing Gas 177]

In those days the young men living in the country districts, for want
of something better to amuse them, were in the habit of inhaling
nitrous-oxide gas, or, as it was then popularly known, "laughing gas."
The young people would gather together, and some of them would inhale
the gas until they came under its influence. The result was in most
cases very amusing. Some would laugh, some would cry, and all in
various ways would carry out the peculiarities of their characters and
dispositions. Thus, if a young man had an inward inclination to preach,
he would, under the influence of "laughing gas," proceed to deliver a
sermon. As these "laughing-gas" parties were exhilarating to the young
people who inhaled the gas, and amusing to those who were spectators,
they became very popular.

But it was not always easy to secure the gas. On one occasion a company
of young men went to Dr. Long's office and asked him to make them a
supply of "laughing gas." There was no apparatus in the office suitable
for making it, but Dr. Long told the young men that the inhalation of
sulphuric ether would have the same effect. He had become acq