MODEKN MYSTICISM AND MODEEN SCIENCE. 277 



product, of which every nation possesses enormous stores. 

 Why should we explore, under difficulties, the dense forests 

 of Peruvian Cordilleras for an antifebrifuge, so long as old 

 bones at home might be made to furnish us with unlimited 

 quantities ? Why indeed, if farther testimony should prove 

 chemical science not to have been false in its teachings ? 



The question remained to be determined whether gelatine 

 as isinglass, or under any other form, would cure intermittent 

 fever. The experiment was tried of course. For a consider- 

 able period, Parisian doctors waxed eloquent about the cures 

 effected on ague patients who had been dosed with gelatine. 

 Alas for the denouement. Pelletier and Caventou, in the 

 year 1820, proved by more delicate experiments that not an 

 atom of gelatine existed in Peruvian bark ; proved, moreover, 

 that the substance formerly mistaken for gelatine was neither 

 more nor less than quina. 



Of course it followed that all the philosophers who had 

 helped to promulgate the announcement that gelatine existed 

 in Peruvian bark, and to demonstrate that gelatine would 

 cure ague, had to revoke. They had committed an error; 

 misled by that self-dishonesty adverted to by Liebig. 



Of all scientific experience, perhaps none is more difficult 

 to sift from error than medical experience. Many circum- 

 stances conduce to this difficulty. First, the subject of 

 experiment the human machine is subject to endless vari- 

 ations. Constitutions are 110 more alike than complexions or 

 mental characteristics. The physician is never sure that he 

 operates consecutively on two constitutions in every respect 

 identical. Second, the physician is placed at the double 

 disadvantage of not merely having to guard against the dis- 

 honesty natural to his own judgment, but the farther dishon- 

 esty natural to his patient's. 



Dishonesty is an ungraceful word; but after the limit- 

 ations imposed, nobody need contemplate it with any great 

 antipathy. Such of us as have been blessed by the chasten- 



