A French author[1] of the sixteenth century says that the Physicians at Montpelier, which was then a great school of medicine, had every year two criminals, the one living, the other dead, delivered to them for dissection. He relates that on one occasion they tried what effect the mere expectation of death would produce upon a subject in perfect health, and in order to this experiment they told the gentleman (for such was his rank) who was placed at their discretion, that, as the easiest mode of taking away his life, they would employ the means which Seneca had chosen for himself, and would therefore open his veins in warm water. Accordingly they covered his face, pinched his feet without lancing them, and set them in a foot-bath, and then spoke to each other as if they saw that the blood were flowing freely, and life departing with it. The man remained motionless, and when after a while they uncovered his face they found him dead. [Footnote 1: BOUCHET.] It would be weakness or folly to deny that dangerous experiments for the promotion of medical or surgical practice may, without breach of any moral law, or any compunctious feeling, be tried upon criminals whose lives are justly forfeited. The Laureate has somewhere in his farraginous notes _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, produced a story of certain Polish physicians who obtained permission to put on the head of a criminal as soon as it had been cut off, and an assurance of his pardon if they should succeed in reuniting it. There is nothing to be objected to such an experiment, except its utter unreasonableness.