the destructive leaven, which he had suspected to exist in the
organism, long before the microbe theory. To give strength--the whole
problem was there; and to give strength was also to give will, to
enlarge the brain by fortifying the other organs.

About this time the doctor, reading an old medical book of the
fifteenth century, was greatly struck by a method of treating disease
called signature. To cure a diseased organ, it was only necessary to
take from a sheep or an ox the corresponding organ in sound condition,
boil it, and give the soup to the patient to drink. The theory was to
cure like by like, and in diseases of the liver, especially, the old
work stated that the cures were numberless. This set the doctor's
vivid imagination working. Why not make the trial? If he wished to
regenerate those enfeebled by hereditary influences, he had only to
give them the normal and healthy nerve substance. The method of the
soup, however, seemed to him childish, and he 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