6 PROCEEDINGS OE TIIE SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. 
which zymotic poisons, where latent, reveal themselves. 
"Their nature, as you are aware, becomes more virulent ac- 
cording to certain local accidents of filth, overcrowding, 
deficient nourishment, &e. Ovor these accessories we can 
exercise efficient control to a cortain point by sanitary re- 
gulations, stringently carried out ; but the essence of the 
maladies escapes our powers of investigation. Although 
they may be limited in their ravages by judicious and 
sometimes expensive precautions, they still claim annually 
their holocausts from every rank. 
It would be premature to say that chemistry applied has 
enabled us to get rid of, or more correctly speaking, to 
neutralise such "evil agencies, but I shall attempt shortly to 
show that a great step appears to have been made in this 
direction. So far back as May 1862 a paper was read in 
Dublin on the action of alkaline sulphites, in which it was 
affirmed that Tolli of Milan had not only shown practically 
that they, equally with sulphurous acid, possessed the power 
of immediately crushing all fermenting or putrefaction pro- 
cesses in the blood of animals, but that their exhibition in 
large doses was unaccompanied by injurious results. In 
his experiments Tolli showed that when two dogs in equal 
conditions were taken and poisoned by the injection of £- 
ounce or larger doses into their femoral veins, of pus, pu- 
trid blood, glandered matter, &c., the dog recovered who 
had been protected either by previous or immediately sub- 
sequent dosing with the alkaline sulphites, while the other 
died in a typhoid state. It is unnecessary to enter into 
these experiments further. In 1863 or 64 Ricci, a Physi- 
cian, practising in Dublin, probably a countryman of Tolli 
brought these facts again before the profession accom- 
panied by three or four remarkable cases of recovery from 
absorption of n 1 poisons whore the patients were to all 
