684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and such pages, long ago forgotten, show into what extravagances the 

 fancies of the so-called scientific mind may be betrayed. Reading 

 them, we involuntarily repeat the poet's line : 



" The learned fool outfools the fool untrained." 



The absurd was carried to its farthest limits in the arguments of a 

 master of arts of the Paris University, named G. Lamy. " Since the 

 blood of a calf," he says, " is made up of many different particles fitted 

 to nourish the different parts of the body, if this blood is thrown into 

 a man's veins, what will become of the particles of blood intended by 

 Nature to produce horns ? The case is not like that of a calf's flesh 

 used for food, because those particles that are unfit for man's nourish- 

 ment are altered in the stomach by coction. In the next place, since 

 the mind and habits usually follow the bodily temperament, there is 

 danger lest the blood of a calf, transfused into a man's veins, may 

 give him also the stupidity and brutal dispositions of that animal." 



Lamy finds followers among the opponents of circulation, his argu- 

 mentative deductions are connected and consequent, but his starting- 

 point is arbitrary and wrong. It is true his adversaries' reasoning is 

 to blame for the same fault, but it will be accepted, if for nothing else, 

 because it is addressed to those innovators who follow Harvey. A 

 fragment of one of Denis's letters, on the question of the transfusion 

 of blood, is worth quoting : " In the practice of this operation we 

 only copy Nature, which, for the support of the embryo, makes a con- 

 stant transfusion of the mother's blood into the child through the 

 umbilical cord. Applying transfusion is only feeding one's self in a 

 shorter way than usual ; that is, it is putting ready-made blood into 

 the veins instead of taking aliment that will turn into blood after sev- 

 eral changes. The blood of animals is better for men than men's own 

 blood ; the reason is, that men, being agitated by various passions, 

 and irregular in the way of living, must have more impure blood than 

 beasts, which are less subject to such disorders. Corrupted blood is 

 never found in animals' veins, while some corruption is always noticed 

 in men's blood, how healthy soever they may be, and even in that of 

 little children, because, having been fed with their mother's blood and 

 milk, they have sucked in corruption with their nourishment." 



All these quotations are curious, though they express mere obsolete 

 ideas, because they show how far from the mark scientific discussions 

 may wander, if they rest only on argument. Once started on that 

 road, transfusion of the blood could run no long career. It yielded in 

 a singular way. An isolated fact was enough to cause its fall. One 

 of Dr. Denis's patients went mad after undergoing the operation of 

 transfusion. His adversaries seized this accident as a weapon, and, 

 Denis not having a diploma from the University of Paris, they pro- 

 cured a condemnation of the new doctrine. Transfusion suffers the 

 same fate as antimony, a century later. On the petition of the Faculty 



