So valuable a means of research has this process of analysis proved to be, that the discoveries made by the spectroscope appear marvellous. The spectroscope was first made known as a refined instrument for the analysis of light by two Germans, a physicist and a chemist, Kirschoff and Bunsen. In 1860, the latter succeeded in detecting and separating two new alkaline bodies from all other bodies from the waters obtained from the Durkeim springs, less than 0·0002 part of a milligramme of which can be detected by spectrum analysis. It is to the labours of Huggins, Norman Lockyer and others that we are indebted for the wonderful discoveries made in astronomy; and chiefly so to Brewster, Herschel, and Talbot, for showing that certain metals give off light of a high degree of refrangibility; that distinct bands are situated at a distance beyond the last visible violet ray ten times as great as the length of the whole visible spectrum from red to violet. With regard to the discoveries made in connection with physiological research, we are indebted to F. Hoppe, who in 1862 first described the absorption bands of human blood. His results were confirmed by the investigations of Professor Sir George Gabriel Stokes, who, by adding certain reducing agents to the blood, found that he could change scarlet blood into purple--“purple cruorine”--and in this way the place occupied by the absorption band in the spectrum could be made to change. He reduced the hæmoglobin by robbing the blood of its oxygen. Thus, by Stokes’ and other methods, we have since arrived at extremely valuable results, and the explanation of the difference in colour between arterial and venous blood; and it has also enabled us to show wherein the breathing power of the red corpuscles resides, and further explains phenomena which before his investigations were inexplicable. [Illustration: Fig. 191.--Fräunhofer’s Spectrum Lines.] The spectroscope seems likely to be of almost as great use in medicine as it has already proved to be in solar and terrestrial chemistry, if we may form an opinion from the large amount of literature which has appeared on the subject. The inception of this magical instrument arose on the instance of a discovery made by Dr. Wollaston in 1802, who, on making a slit in the shutter of his room, instead of a round hole, the spectrum of sunlight, instead of being composed of a number of coloured discs, was now a band of pure colours, each colour being free from admixture with the next to it. Moreover, he found that this colour band was not continuous, as Newton described it, but interrupted here and there by _fine black lines_.