e invented in its stead that of grinding in a mortar
the brain of a sheep, moistening it with distilled water, and then
decanting and filtering the liquor thus obtained. He tried this liquor
then mixed with Malaga wine, on his patients, without obtaining any
appreciable result. Suddenly, as he was beginning to grow discouraged,
he had an inspiration one day, when he was giving a lady suffering
from hepatic colics an injection of morphine with the little syringe of
Pravaz. What if he were to try hypodermic injections with his liquor?
And as soon as he returned home he tried the experiment on himself,
making an injection in his side, which he repeated night and morning.
The first doses, of a gram only, were without effect. But having
doubled, and then tripled the dose, he was enchanted, one morning on
getting up, to find that his limbs had all the vigor of twenty. He went
on increasing the dose up to five grams, and then his respiration became
deeper, and above all he worked with a clearness of mind, an ease,
which he had not known for years. A great flood of happiness, of joy in
living, inundated his being. From this time, after he had had a syringe
made at Paris capable of containing five grams, he was surprised at the
happy results which he obtained with his patients, whom he had on their
feet again in a few days, full of energy and activity, as if endowed
with new life. His method was still tentative and rude, and he divined
in it all sorts of dangers, and especially, that of inducing embolism,
if the liquor was not perfectly pure. Then he suspected that the
strength of his patients came in part from the fever his treatment
produced in them. But he was only a pioneer; the method would improve
later. Was it not already a miracle to make the ataxic walk, to bring
consumptives back to life, as it were; even to give hours of lucidity to
the insane? And at the thought of this discovery of the alchemy of the
twentieth century, an immense hope opened up before him; he believed he
had discovered the universal panacea, the elixir of life, which was
to combat human debility, the one real cause of every ill; a veritable
scientific Fountain of Youth, which, in giving vigor, health, and will
would create an altogether new and superior humanity.

This particular morning in his chamber, a room with a northern aspect
and somewhat dark owing to the vicinity of the plane trees, furnished
simply with an iron bedstead, a mahogany writing