VOL. II.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, 2^3 



the operation, and who had been seen with her, he demanded that a day might be set them to ap- 

 pear in person. 



Lastly, that since tlie transfusion had succeeded well the first two times, and had not been under- 

 taken the tliird but at tlie earnest request of the woman, who otherwise had so ill observed the orders 

 of tliose tliat had made the operation, and who was suspected to have caused the death of her husband, 

 he demanded tliat tlie execution of tlie decree of prefixing them a day. for personal appearance might 

 surcease. 



Whereu^wn it was decreed, that the widow of du Mauroy should on a set day appear personally, 

 and undergo the examination upon the alleged informations ; and that more ample informations 

 should be made of the contents in tlie complaint of Mr. Denis : And then, that for the future no 

 transflision should be made upon any human body but by the approbation of the physicians of the 

 Parisian faculty. 



Since this sentence new informations have been given in, considerably 

 stronger than the former; and witnesses have been discovered, to whom the 

 woman had committed it as a secret, that it was arsenic she mingled in her 

 husband's broth, and even that the patient before his death having given the re- 

 mainder of one of the messes of broth to a cat, the animal died of it a few days 

 after. 



As to the experiment of transfusion, you see it is not absolutely prohibited 

 by this sentence ; there needs no more to practise it but to have the approbation 

 of some physicians of Paris ; of whom seven or eight have already signed the 

 proposal made for one. And I have now before me a paralytic woman (a 

 neighbour and friend of her who was cured of the palsy this way) who is 

 resolved to present a petition to the magistrate, and therein to desire the trans- 

 fusion may be allowed her. 



Meantime, if ever the faculty of the Parisian physicians meet upon this 

 business, I do not believe that they will act with that precipitancy as is supposed. 

 And as to the parliament, I do not see that those who compose it are of a re- 

 solution to strike at this operation, unless it should happen that the experiments 

 that may be made before them should not succeed as thoSe have done that have 

 been made hitherto. It is well known to that court, that the faculty made a 

 decree a hundred years since against antimony, which was then used by the 

 physicians of Montpelier, and that after they had given it a place among poisons, 

 they obtained a sentence prohibiting the use thereof: yet nevertheless these 

 physicians not having forborn to use it under another name, the effects thereof 

 proved so advantageous, and the recovery of our great monarch thereby so 

 famous, that the same faculty of Paris was constrained two years ago, by a de- 

 cree, to approve what before they had forbidden, and even demanded another 

 sentence for permitting the use of the same.* 



• If we put together all the circumstances stated in the preceding narrative, we shall easily be con- 

 vinced that the operation of transfusion did not occasion this man's deatli, and that tliere were strong 

 grounds for suspecting that he was poisoned. The selecting, however, of such a subject for the ex- 



