by depriving it of its principle of irritability, or of its oxygen. After having made this observation upon the experiments of Mr. Fontana, I must do him the justice to add, that I have found all his experiments very accurate, and that in all those which I have repeated, the result has been exactly conformable to the account given by him; it is in his conclusion only that he appears to be deceived.” [93] This is an assertion so extravagant, that is difficult to imagine what could induce any one to make it. Did our author ever hear that laurel water, &c. produced the venereal disease, the plague, yellow fever, gout, stone, small-pox, &c. &c. or to what patients and in what diseases did he ever administer this remedy with success? I mean not to deny that these substances will cure _some_ diseases as well as produce others; but such an unqualified expression that they can not only produce but cure all diseases without exception, never can be admitted. On this I must in the first place observe, that since _philosophers_ and _truth_ seem to be so far distant from each other that even _six thousand_ experiments cannot bring them together, it were greatly to be wished that in their researches they would pay a little more regard to humanity. If the Author of Nature has set man at the head of the creation, if inferior animals must patiently resign their lives to preserve ours, are we therefore authorised to torment and put them to death by thousands for every idle whim that comes into our heads? After Spallanzani, Fontana, Girtanner and a multitude of other learned _barbarians_ had cut in pieces, boiled alive, poisoned and tortured thousands of inoffensive animals, new massacres it seems must be made, and new tortures inflicted, because an _experimentum crucis_ is still wanted! If knowledge is to be obtained only by such means as these, it certainly must be derived from a very polluted source.