circumstances, be abandoned others to the care of nature. After which he
counted the survivors. These terrible experiments were, truly, a human
sacrifice on the altar of science. Dr. Griffon did not seem to think of
this. In the eyes of this prince of science (as they phrase it) the
patients of his hospital were only subjects for study and experiment; and
as, after all, there resulted sometimes from these essays _in anima
vili_ a fact or discovery useful to science, the doctor showed himself
as entirely satisfied and triumphant as a general after a victory
sufficiently costly in soldiers.

Homeopathy had never a more violent adversary than Dr. Griffon. He look
upon this method as absurd and homicidal; thus, strong in his convictions,
and wishing, as he said, to drive the homeopathists to the wall, he offered
to abandon to their care a certain number of patients, on whom they might
experiment to their liking. But he affirmed in advance, sure of not being
contradicted by the result, that, out of twenty patients submitted to this
treatment, not over five, at the outside would survive. The homeopathists
gave the go-by to this proposition, to the great chagrin of the doctor, who
regretted the loss of this occasion to prove, by figures, the vanity of
homeopathic practice. Dr. Griffon would have been stupefied if any one had
said to him, in reference to this free and autocratic disposition of his
subjects:

"Such a state of things would cause the barbarism of those days to be
regretted when condemned criminals were exposed to undergo newly-discovered
surgical operations; operations which they dared not practice on the
uncondemned. If it were successful, the condemned was pardoned. Compared
to what you do, sir, this barbarity was charity. After all, a chance for
life was thus given to a poor creature for whom the executioner was
waiting, and an experiment was rendered possible which might be useful