TREATMENT. 127 



absorbed by the wet surface of the staves ; the cider he 

 inay subsequently pour into the vessel, will remain sweet for 

 a long period and will not undergo the fermentation ordi- 

 narily induoed. This preserving power is one of the attri- 

 butes of the siilphurous (not sulphuric) acid generated in the 

 combustion of sulphur, and has been taken as the start- 

 ing point for some exceedingly ingenious researches by Dr. 

 A. Polli, of Milan. This learned professor adopted the cata- 

 lytic theory of disease, as applicable to those maladies in 

 which the blood having absorbed some poisonous morbific 

 germs, undergoes marked constitutional changes ; and though 

 he was met at the threshold of his investigation by the dog- 

 matic assertion of the celebrated Bernard, that any substance 

 capable of destroying a catalytic poison in the blood, would 

 so affect that fluid, that it would be thereafter incapable of 

 vital function ; persisted in his inquiries, until he satisfied 

 himself that not only did sulphurous acid possess this power, 

 but that its compounds with soda, lime, or magnesia whether 

 hyposulphites, simple sulphites, or bi-sulphites also exercised 

 the same function, and could be exhibited in large doses and 

 with perfect impunity. Two animals of the same kind, size, 

 and condition, and fed alike for a few days, except that one 

 received a certain amount of a sulphite in his food, were 

 slaughtered; when it was discovered that the latter gave 

 evidence of the existence of the drug in every tissue, organ, 

 and secretion ; and furthermore, remained perfectly fresh 

 though the weather was that of summer in a tropical clime ; 

 while the former, to which no sulphite had been given, 

 rapidly passed after death into an advanced stage of decom- 

 position. This experiment being confirmed by many others 

 equally satisfactory, the deduction naturally followed, that as 

 no fermentation could exist in the presence of a sulphite, and 

 as this remedy could be administered without any injury to 

 the vital function, and permeate every part of the living 

 structure, that it was only necessary to saturate the system 

 with a sulphite, in order either to prevent, or arrest the cata- 

 lytic action in all zymotic maladies. 



