the plaintiff’s specification. Fortunately for the justice of the case, an additional apparatus was required to draw the flame through the meshes of the lace, and, without such a contrivance, the operation whatever might be the nature of the combustible _gas_, or _vapour_, employed, could not succeed; and since it is an acknowledged principle that an adoption of any part is an infringement of the whole, a verdict was returned for the plaintiff. But suppose the merits of the case had wholly rested, as had been expected, upon the distinction between _gas_ and _vapour_; the chemical evidence would no doubt have urged that the one being permanently elastic and incapable of condensation, must be considered as very distinct in its nature from the other which admitted of being condensed into a liquid. Under such a conviction the plaintiff might probably have lost his verdict. But had the same trial, under the same circumstances, been deferred only for a few weeks, the effect of the chemical evidence must have been widely different, _Mr. Faraday_ having, within the last month, succeeded in condensing no less than nine[59] of these gaseous bodies that were universally acknowledged to be permanently elastic! and thus has this ingenious and indefatigable chemist, by a happy generalization, annulled the supposed characteristic distinction between _gas_ and _vapour_. The subject of forgery, and of frauds upon banker’s checques, accomplished by the well-known agency of acids in discharging ordinary writing, would upon the same grounds have been considered as a legitimate object of medical jurisprudence; and we should have proceeded to inquire into the different chemical means by which such frauds might be prevented.[60] The subject of nuisances would also have received a more extended notice; and we should not have deemed it necessary to limit our observations upon the detection of fraudulent adulteration to those substances, the purity of which is essential to the health of the community. But it is unnecessary to multiply examples in proof of the latitude of the subject, or of the utter impracticability of any attempt to pursue its ramifications in the present work.