4 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Selecting one of the best scientists in the kingdom, they bade him 

 investigate and prepare a remedy. The result was published in 

 that book, Hassall's Adulterations Detected, a work that ought to 

 make its author immortal. He there shows how all bodies differ 

 in the minute structure of their granules, and renders it as easy 

 to tell the genuine article from its adulterations as to tell apples 

 from potatoes. 



Some years ago a trial at Salem, N. Y., illustrated the value of 

 science in questions of testimony. A man named Thomas Page, 

 to gain possession of certain property, had forged a conveyance. 

 The instrument purported to have been written in 1827, and was 

 on paper colored blue with ultramarine. It was conclusively 

 shown that ultramarine was not discovered until 1828, and not 

 used in the manufacture of paper prior to 1841. By showing also 

 that the paper was made on a Fourdrinier weaving-machine and 

 by the calendering process, scientific and other evidence proved 

 that it was probably not manufactured before 1845, and certainly 

 could not have been in existence in 1827. The result was the over- 

 throw of Page's suit, followed by his own prosecution, conviction, 

 and sentence for forgery. 



There was a time in the past history of the earth when, if a 

 murderer could secretly place poison in the food of his victim, he 

 might hope to accomplish his heinous purpose without fear of 

 detection. Not so to-day. Chemical and microscopical analyses 

 are applied to the stomach of the deceased, and with the symp- 

 toms reveal, not approximately, but with perfect and absolute 

 precision, the cause of death. 



But why stop to mention single instances when the records of 

 jurisprudence everywhere are full of cases where science has been 

 applied to legal affairs ? The judicial investigation of such crimes 

 as poisoning, wounds, infanticide, abortion, rape, illegitimacy, to 

 say nothing of the deeds caused by insanity, must ever receive a 

 large amount of aid at the hands of medical science. 



In these Science does not always appear as an avenging Neme- 

 sis, hunting down and punishing the guilty. She sometimes plays 

 the role of the vindicator of the innocent. Dr. Lyons gives an 

 account of a case in which a man was arrested and charged with 

 murder. A hatchet, smeared with dried blood and hair, was 

 found under his bed. Indignation ran high, and people were al- 

 most disposed to lynch him. He was, however, detained, and the 

 blood-stains and hair subjected to microscopical examination, 

 when they were found to be those of an animal which he had 

 killed and had then carelessly thrown the hatchet under the bed. 



Such are some of the practical benefits accruing to us from 

 scientific research. With Briarean arms it has reached out and 

 laid hold of every part of our civilization. Proteus-like it as- 



