] not far from Ravageurs' Island. The worthy
doctor, one of the physicians of the City Hospital where we shall conduct
our readers, who had obtained this situation through a powerful interest,
regarded his ward as a sort of place where he experimented on the poor the
treatment which he applied afterward to his rich patients, never hazarding
on the last any new cures before having first tried and retried the
application _in anima vili_, as he said, with that kind of passionless
barbarity which a blind love for science produces. Thus, if the doctor
wished to convince himself of the comparative effect of some new and
hazardous treatment, in order to be able to deduce consequences favorable
to such or such system, he took a certain number of patients, treated some
according to the new system, others by the ancient method. Under some
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.
Pages:
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326