40 
INFLUENCE  OF  HYPODERMIC  INJECTION,  ETC. 
furore,  furnaces  and  fumes,  sought  for  that  elixir  which  should 
place  eternity  within  his  control,  she  was  then  encircled  by  the 
fancies  of  her  speculative  philosophy,  encumbering  the  studies 
of  all  her  collateral  branches. 
But  in  the  present  age,  the  exact  methods  of  investigation 
have  plunged  her  again  into  a  new  labyrinth  of  untenable 
theories. 
The  famous  trial  of  Palmer,  in  England,  for  poisoning  his 
victim  with  strychnia,  drew  all  chemists  to  investigate  most 
thoroughly  the  behavior  of  this  alkaloid  to  chemical  reagents, 
and  we  now  have  very  full  data  and  methods  which  render  its 
detection  and  recognition  quite  easy  and  simple. 
The  beautiful  system  of  dialysis  by  Graham  has  been  another 
step  in  advance,  and  can  truly  be  called  one  of  the  esthetics  of 
toxicology,  divesting  it,  as  it  does,  of  the  circuitous  and  very 
unpleasant  course  heretofore  pursued  in  examining  the  viscera 
of  a  poisoned  subject.  But  brilliant  and  rapid  as  have  been  the 
advances  in  this  department  of  chemistry,  those  very  discoveries 
have  turned  up  new  obstacles  to  be  overcome. 
Of  late  years,  a  system  of  introducing  remedial  agents  into 
the  circulation  more  rapidly  than  can  be  done  through  the 
agency  of  the  stomach  bids  fair  to  place  in  the  hands  of  design- 
ing persons  a  power  which  has  never  before  been  possessed  by 
any  within  or  without  the  profession  of  medicine.  I  refer  to 
the  system  of  hypodermic  injections,  becoming  now  so  deserv- 
edly popular  with  the  "regular  medical  profession.'* 
This  system  owes  its  success  to  the  facility  with  which  poisons 
are  introduced  into  the  blood. 
From  the  earliest  times,  blood  has  been  a  favorite  topic. 
Moses,  in  accordance  with  the  views  of  the  ancient  Egyptians, 
placed  the  seat  of  life  in  the  blood. 
One  might,  therefore,  reasonably  have  expected  that  a  subject 
which  had  played  such  an  important  part  in  medicine  would 
have  had  more  than  empirical  supports  on  which  to  base  some 
degree  of  accurate  knowledge. 
When  we  remember  that  only  three-fourths  of  a  century  ago 
oxygen  was  unknown  to  the  chemist,  we  can  readily  perceive 
why  former  investigators  were  powerless.    Even  to  physics, 
