PEEFACE. 



Scientific literature is increasing at such a pace at present 

 that it is difficult to keep completely acquainted with even one 

 branch of it. In consequence, some workers publish their own 

 results without taking the trouble to ascertain what other men 

 have been doing in the same field. Others, again, belong to the 

 " Ten Year School," who systematically neglect all work except 

 that done within the last ten years. But there are many more, 

 thoroughly conscientious workers, who try to find out all that 

 has been done in their own field of investigation, so that their 

 own observations may be rightly fitted in and help to build up 

 a solid structure of knowledge. But even these are often 

 hampered by the difficulty of obtaining the original papers to 

 which they would like to refer, and consequently remain 

 unacquainted with observations which may be of considerable 

 importance. This seems to have been the case with the papers 

 here reprinted by Sir Joseph Fayrer and myself, because in his 

 admirable work on Venoms, Calmette credits Lacerda with the 

 discovery of the antidotal power of permanganate of potash and 

 himself witli that of chloride of gold, although both of these 

 substances, as will be seen from pages 137 and 149 of these 

 reprints, were shown by us to be active a good many years ago. 



With the concurrence of Lady Fayrer and Major Leonard 

 Eogers, and by permission of the Eoyal Society, I thought it 

 would be advantageous to republish these papers, not only for 

 the purpose of giving wider circulation to the work of the late 

 Sir Joseph Fayrer, but in the hope that they may be useful to 

 other workers in the same field. 



LAUDEE BEUNTOK 



London, 



January, 1909. 



