Excerpt from The Harveian Oration, 1894, Delivered Before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th, 1894 The method originated by Wren, of injecting drugs into the circulation, was skilfully utilised by Magendie for the purpose of localising the particular part of the body upon which the drugs exerted their action, and he thus con elusively proved that the symptoms produced by strychnine were due to its effect on the spinal cord. His experiments showed that the rate of absorption from various parts of the body varied enormously, and through the teaching of Christison, led to the introduction into practice by Dr. Alexander Wood of that most useful aid to modern therapeutics, the hypodermic syringe. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.