He now felt sure he had discovered a drug which would supersede chloroform--a drug more lasting in its immediate effects, and yet far less harmful in its ultimate results on the balance of the system.

A name being wanted for it, he christened it "lethodyne." It was the best pain-luller yet invented.
For the next few weeks, at Nat's, we heard of nothing but lethodyne.
Patients recovered and patients died; but their deaths or recoveries were as dross to lethodyne, an anaesthetic that might revolutionise surgery, and even medicine! A royal road through disease, with no trouble to the doctor and no pain to the patient! Lethodyne held the field.

We were all of us, for the moment, intoxicated with lethodyne.
Sebastian's observations on the new agent occupied several months.
He had begun with the raccoon; he went on, of course, with those poor scapegoats of physiology, domestic rabbits.

Not that in this particular case any painful experiments were in contemplation.

The Professor tried the drug on a dozen or more quite healthy young animals--with the strange result that they dozed off quietly, and never woke up again.
This nonplussed Sebastian.