A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



does not appear, but the percentage of deaths must 

 have been very high, as the practice was generally 

 condemned. Insensibility could have been produced 

 only by swallowing large quantities of the liquid, which 

 dripped into the nose and mouth when the sponge was 

 applied, and a lethal quantity might thus be swallowed. 

 The method was revived, with various modifications, 

 from time to time, but as often fell into disuse. As late 

 as 1782 it was sometimes attempted, and in that year 

 the King of Poland is said to have been completely 

 anaesthetized and to have recovered, after a painless 

 amputation had been performed by the surgeons. 



Peter of Abano was one of the first great men pro- 

 duced by the University of Padua. His fate would 

 have been even more tragic than that of the ship- 

 wrecked Arnald had he not cheated the purifying 

 fagots of the church by dying opportunely on the eve 

 of his execution for heresy. But if his spirit had 

 cheated the fanatics, his body could not, and his bones 

 were burned for his heresy. He had dared to deny the 

 existence of a devil, and had suggested that the case 

 of a patient who lay in a trance for three days might 

 help to explain some miracles, like the raising of 

 Lazarus. 



His great work was Conciliator Differ entiarum, an 

 attempt to reconcile physicians and philosophers. But 

 his researches were not confined to medicine, for he 

 seems to have had an inkling of the hitherto unknown 

 fact that air possesses weight, and his calculation of 

 the length of the year at three hundred and sixty-five 

 days, six hours, and four minutes, is exceptionally ac- 

 curate for the age in which he lived. He was probably 



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