250 A Retrospect in Biochemistry [Dec. 



been frozen to death, was analyzed and no arsenic found. Prob- 

 ably this was the first, if not the only time, that an entire human 

 body had been subjected to chemical analysis. 



The prisoner was found guilty of poisoning his wife, and was 

 executed. No other case of homicide by poison was tried in New 

 York for a period of thirty years, though thereafter there were 

 several other causes celehres within a decade. 



Experimentation in physiology in the fifties and sixties, though 

 often brilhant and showing rare technique on the part of the 

 teachers, was comparatively simple. Few Colleges possessed any 

 of the recently devised apparatus for recording the action of the 

 pulse, the contractions of a muscle, and none of the more elaborate 

 apparatus used now in the demonstration of the functions of the 

 special senses. The institutions abroad had often very little. When 

 Helmholtz was called to Berlin he depleted the cases at Heidel- 

 berg, for most of the apparatus had been presented to him as a gift 

 by the King of Bavaria. 



Professor Kühne, who succeeded Helmholtz, was more devoted 

 to the chemical side of physiology, and inaugurated new lines of 

 work which soon attracted so many students that a special build- 

 ing was erected for him. It is with the keenest pleasure that the 

 writer remembers the hours spent in listening to his able lectures, 

 and recalls his genial presence in the laboratory. There were but 

 few students in Kühne's laboratory at that particular time (1871- 

 2), Professor Gamgee of Manchester being one of them. In the 

 following Semester the writer pursued courses with Professors 

 Ludwig and Drechsel in Leipsic. There were many students and 

 post-graduate students attending the lectures on physiology, but he 

 was the only Student in the laboratory for physiological chemistry, 

 Professor Drechsel was a splendid teacher and, devoted to research, 

 we have him to thank for the elucidation of many problems. 



Such were the conditions at two of the foremost German uni- 

 versities in 1871-2. The physiological building at Leipsic was 

 commodious and Professor Ludwig had a two-hour period for his 

 lectures, which enabled him to perform many experiments other- 

 wise impossible. Many times animals were shown in an insen- 

 sible condition, under artificial respiration, the preparation of the 



