narcotics, such as hemlock, to the mixture, and boiled a new
sponge in this decoction. After boiling for a certain time, this
sponge was dried, and when wanted for use was dipped in hot water
and applied to the nostrils.

Just how frequently patients recovered from the administration of
such a combination of powerful poisons does not appear, but the
percentage of deaths must have been very high, as the practice
was generally condemned. Insensibility could have been produced
only by swallowing large quantities of the liquid, which dripped
into the nose and mouth when the sponge was applied, and a lethal
quantity might thus be swallowed. The method was revived, with
various modifications, from time to time, but as often fell into
disuse. As late as 1782 it was sometimes attempted, and in that
year the King of Poland is said to have been completely
anaesthetized and to have recovered, after a painless amputation
had been performed by the surgeons.

Peter of Abano was one of the first great men produced by the
University of Padua. His fate would have been even more tragic
than that of the shipwrecked Arnald had he not cheated the
purifying fagots of the church by dying opportunely on the eve of
his execution for heresy. But if his spirit had cheated the
fanatics, his body could not, and his bones were burned for his
heresy. He had dared to deny the existence of a devil, and had
suggested that the case of a patient who lay in a trance for
three days might help to explain some miracles, like the raising
of Lazarus.

His great work was Conciliator Differentiarum, an attempt to