fluence which deprives a testator of his free agency in influence which he is too weak to resist, and that will render the instrument not his free, unrestrained act, is sufficient to invalidate a will. In the disease of inebriety, and in the morphine habit at times, there is weakness and infirmity, and the unscrupulous and crafty are quick to take advantage of it and with alacrity impose upon that condition in which a sick or feeble person will assent to almost any suggestion for the sake of peace and quiet. It is often difficult to determine, unless a patient has been under careful medical treatment, to what extent the mind in these cases is impaired, and the will enfeebled. With regard to undue influence in these cases, also, it is not often the subject of direct proof. It can be shown, however, by all the facts and circumstances surrounding the testator-the nature of the will, his family relations, the condition of his health and mind, his dependency upon, and subjection to, the control of the person supposed to have wielded the influence, the opportunity and disposition of the person to wield it, and other acts and declarations of such person. It is not sufficient to a will that it is obtained by the legitimate influence which affec tion or gratitude gives a relative over the testator. A competent testator may bestow his property upon the objects of his affection, and he may from gratitude reward those who have rendered him services; but if one takes advantage of grati tude or affection to obtain an unjust will in his favor, using his position to subdue and control the mind of the testator so as substantially to deprive him of the use of his free agency, then the fact that affection and gratitude was the moving cause makes it no less a case of undue inflaence In the disease of inebriety and in the morphine habit we have, certainly, at times, an enfeebled mind and body, where it is very easy for the dominant will of some relative or friend to destroy the free agency of a decedent and operate for their own personal aggrandizement. If any given will is manisfestly an unjust one, and disregards the ordinary ob

ligations of duty and affection, it should be viewed with suspicion. A will or testament may by its provis ions furnish intrinsic evidence invelving it in suspicion and tending to show the incapacity of the testator to make a disposition of his estate with judgment and understanding, in reference to the amount and situation of his property, and the relative claims of the different persons who should have been the objects of his bounty; such as the disposition of his estate to the exclusion of near and dear relatives having the strongest natural claims upon his affections, a wife and children, for instance, or other near and dear relations, without apparent ca ise, which alone would be a suspicious circumstance, although not proving, per se, sufficient ground for setting aside the will.

We must consider together the three factors of the mental condition of the testator, the presence or absence of undue influence and the character and terms of the will itself in arriving at a proper conclusion as to the upholding of the instrument or will.

In determining the mental con-lition of the testator the opinions and testimony of those not experts, but who have had opportunities of observing the decedent, ought to be received. A non-expert may frequently be able to tell very intelligently whether the testator seemed to him sane or insane, rational or irrational. An intelligent person who has been daily in the society of a testator is frequently an excellent judge of his sanity or insanity, and for my own part, I always welcome such opinions, founded on personal observation, as an aid to me in arriving at my conclusions. We must understand that the dipsomaniac in the intervals between his paroxysms has a lucid interval, and at such times may make a will. There comes a time, however, in the history of nearly all inebriates and of opium habituates, when the disease has been so extended as to actually impair the functions of the mind, practically without cessation, and this should invalidate a will. Such a case must be regarded in the same light as a case of mental

derangement produced by any other cause. Again, take the case of the morphine habituate, when deprived of the customary stimulus. The functions of the mind are in such a case most markedly impaired if the person is taking opium or morphine in any quantity, and a will made at such a time is open to grave suspicion of its propriety. Of course, when fixed mental disease has supervened upon either inebriety or the opium habit, the man or woman is incompetent and irresponsible for his or her acts. If the person is so excited by either present intoxication or from the effects of morphine as not to be master of himself, his legal acts are void. An insane delusion affecting the provisions of a will must, of course, invalidate it. Physicians are fre quently requested to act as subscribing witnesses to wills, but should never allow themselves to do so, unless thoroughly satisfied of the mental soundness of the testator, and that the testator understands the provisions of the will, and that it is his own act, and not that of another

mind. No person is justified in putting his name as subscribing witness to a will unless he knows from the testator himself that he understands what he is doing. The witness should also be satisfied from his own knowledge of the state of the testator's mental capacity that he is of sound and disposing mind and memory. By placing his name to the instrument the witness, in effect, certifies to his knowledge of the mental capacity of the testator, and that the will was executed by him freely and understandingly, with a full knowledge of its contents. This is the legal effect of the signature of the witness when he is dead or out of the jurisdiction of the Court. Finally, no lawyer is justified in preparing or assisting in or consenting to, the execution of a will unless he knows personally that the testator fully understands what he is about, and unless he has thoroughly satisfied himself of the testator's mental capacity and freedom of action, and he should never accept suggestions or directions from a third party. 259 West 136th street, New York.

It possess many features not unlike milk deprived of its fat. What its special, definite functions are in the finer processes of nutrition are not definitely known, though they no doubt are vastly more complex than those of the corpuscles.

As it decomposes almost at once, after it is discharged from a bloodvessel, an accurate study of it is quite impossible. Various physical conditions and chemical reagents will retard the coagulation of fibrin in it; but even this does not imply that its vitality has not been greatly impaired or destroyed by them. In its natural state, plasma is a fluid, containing a ferment which, when liberated, leads to a coagulation of the blood, and exercises a potent influence in the repair of wounds. This is most manifest in clean-cut faces, when the surface transudes an amber-colored, gluey material, which favors cohesion.

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Of late years, the view has been, that in primary union permanent cohesion is effected by cellular proliferation, rather than through the organization of what has been miscalled "lymph." This, after being effused, becomes reticulated and moderately vascular, although never to the extent of normal tissues, because of the tendency of all transient capillaries to become resorbed and disappear.

The plasma calls for a liberal supply of water in order to maintain its proper fluidity, which after flushing the tissues, takes effete materials and throws them off, in vapor from the lungs, in urine from the kidneys, in perspiration from the skin, and through the intestine. In cholera it is supposed that the unquenchable thirst of that disease, in severe forms, depends on the excessive fluid discharge by the bowel and a thickening of the blood. This is, perhaps, in the main correct, as thirst is always present when there are large discharges from the body, as of the blood itself, in hemorrhage, etc.; but in peritonitis, without any morbid discharges, except occasionally vomiting, the thirst is sometimes insatiable and most agonizing.

The plasma has the property of

freely passing through the blood-vesvesls in normal and morbid conditions of health. We have seen that it is in the medium through which all epithelial structures are supplied, as well as the finer histological elements of every other tissue in the body, passing out through the walls of the capillaries with the necessary pabulum to maintain its vitality and functions and returning through the vessel's walls to be carried onward in the venous current, back to the centre of the circulation. The plasma escapes through the capillary walls in enormous quantities, under a multiplicity of pathological conditions, though generally considerably altered in its chemical, physical and histological composition.

It is most remarkable how tenaciously we cling to terms which have once become current, although there never has been rational grounds for their employment. Thus, we every where see scattered through modern medical literature the word "serous effusion," in local or organic inflammation, which we know for a certainty, in all osmoses concomitant with it, those effusions contain an abundance of fibrogenous elements.

Although, of late years, the blood corpuscles have been specially studied, they really are of secondary importance as compared with the fluid in which they float.

Before the days when the microscope was so generally employed and cellular pathology was promised to explain so much, the chemistry of the blood occupied a prominent place in medical studies. But, with the exception of attempting to isolate a few more proximate principles, for the past twenty years chemistry has added but little to our knowledge of hematology.

Perhaps, the custom of relying too exclusively, in our practice, on the light coming through the microscope, to the exclusion of chemistry, has been a mistake.

It may be partly explained, however, that in order to derive any definite information through a chemical examination of those fluids which are derivatives from the blood, nothing less than an expert knowledge of

as a well

chemistry will answer; equipped laboritory and all those accessories in technique of manipulation, reliable reagents, etc., are indispensable, in order to avoid error and attain to precise results.

The plasma, it must be remember ed, is a living, physiological fluid, probably more intimately associated with the corpuscles, than is generally supposed and, though there are of late years; reasons for believing that the red bone marrow, the lymphatics and the thyroid are concerned in the production of the blood corpuscles, we have no proof that they are not generated in the plasma itself.

We are only certain of the presence of corpuscles in the blood, by contrast or color, as we see them; thus the red corpuscles which appear yellow, and the so-called "colorless" corpuscles which are of a much lighter shade, are readily recognizable; but of those corpuscular elements of the same refractive index and color of the plasmic fluid itself we have no knowledge whatever. The blood corpuscles themselves, in various territories of the skelital capillaries, are seen to halt and seem to maintain a firm hold on the capillary wall, to move on after varying intervals. May it not be, that in all these situations, a material similar to the spawn of fish, or species of mycelium-like buds that, in time, become impreg nated and detached, though only coming into view, as they take on color and appear, first, as hematoblasts?

The blood to the human body is the same as the ocean and its tributaries are to the earth. The ocean is the centre to which all must return to be purified. Its water is salt. Let us compare it to the arterial blood. The atmosphere is soon charged with its evaporating fluid, periodically as rain is deposited on the earth, to again move towards the ocean, as fresh water. Now let us compare this to venous blood in the veins, and we have a striking analogy.

Now in the cycle which the blood makes in the body all the tissues are flushed by a fluid in rapid motion. It might seem that this motion might render reproduction of the corpuscles

in the current impossible. But in the lymphatic glands and spleen the extreme tortuosity of the vessels form eddies and stases near the periphery, where movement is probably irregular.

Plausible and interesting as may have been the views of many distinguished investigators on the sources of the corpuscular supply of the blood from extrinsic sources, they do not demonstrate that the plasma itself is not the fons et origo of it all, as will be later noted.

THE PLASMIC CURRENTS.

It has been noted in the preceding chapters that the blood corpuscles do not and cannot penetrate the ledges of basic substance in which all epithelial elements are lodged; or, in other words, in the generally accepted sense, the epithelia are avascular. This statement, however, seems rather difficult to reconcile with wellestablished facts, for we know that many substances which enter the stomach are carried to certain organs, e. g., the kidneys, by the blood and thrown off by the renal secretion. But how do they penetrate the walls of the renal epithelia, when no blood-vessels pierce them? Evidently in no other manner than through the plasmic current.

What is the chemical composition of this fluid? Physiologists commonly give us only an approximate idea of its chemical composition, or morphological characters, for the simple reason that the moment it leaves the blood-vessel its decomposition commences, and its death begins. Denis, one of the latest writers on this topic, was able to separate the corpuscles from the blood, and preserve it in a fluid state by the addition of oneseventh part, in volume, of a concentrated solution of sulphite of soda to freshly-drawn blood. Then to the decanted plasma he added an excess of pulverized sodium chloride, when a soft, pulpy material was precipitated. This, he decided, was a proximate principle, which he designated "plasmine."

This substance is soluble in ten parts of water, which may now be once more divided by whipping with

broom corn into pure fibrine, or, as he called it, "concrete fibrin," and "liquid fibrin," or as it is lately called, "metalbumen." The liquid fibrin may be coagulated by the addition of sulphate of magnesia. But, what does all this prove in connection with the question of the actual composition of the living, moving fluid? Certainly nothing more than was known long ago on this point. Twenty years ago it was taught that fibrin was a definite, proximate principle. But now it is well known that, as fibrin, it does not pre-exist in the blood, and that coagulation is dependent on a ferment. Nevertheless, the older view strikes one as the more rational, for the evolution of this nitrogenized substance was spontaneous, and occurred in the moving current, as well as when withdrawn from the body. Plasma, metalbumen, or serum ace the products of chemical reagents acting on the blood, and are in no sense normal elements, but rather artificial products, as much so as soap is the resultant of an alkali acting on a fat, and casein the product of a ferment acting on milk.

Of the definite chemical principles composing the plasma in the living blood within the vesvel we know nothing. All that can be said of it is that it is the vitalized fluid in which the corpuscles of the blood float, and that in all the processes of nutrition and repair of the tissues it plays a dominant role.

Modern hemotologists and physiologists have given its study but little attention, and have rather bent their energies to the study of the corpuscular elements; their probable source, function and destination.

No effort has been made by me to further investigate the composition of the plasma, but rather to direct attention to its functions in the economy.

My own observations and reflections have led me to the conclusion that this fluid chiefly serves as a medium of transportation of all the nutrient elements of the circulation, as well as the residuum of tissue metabolism to the emunctories; the blood corpuscles being concerned chiefly in

the elaboration and preparation of those finer changes which all elements must undergo before the glandular organs can assimilate them.

As we view the movements of the blood, within its transparent tubular conduits, we can distinguish nothing in motion except the corpuscles. These flit and shoot in every direction, but the plasma, as far as the eye can detect, is motionless.

This limitation of visual inspection is what prevents us from following the plasmic stream, which,though not foreused through tunnels, after it leaves the capillaries, must yet preserve an active interchange through the connective tissue meshes and the endless epithelial and endothelial elements, which are everywhere imbedded in the stroma of organs.

Of one thing, at least, we are certain, viz.: that the plasma is chiefly composed of water; that all the water taken into the body is promptly appropriated by it for irrigating and other purposes, and nearly as promptly carried to the secreting organs and thrown off.

In order, however, that the economy may utilize it to the best advantage, water must be ample in quantity, and pure in quality. The farmer well knows that next to a rich herbage, his choice milking cows must have an abundance of good water. And so it is with the human body and human blood; pure, fresh water are their most essential aliment.

All epithelial structures require a large quantity of water. To the sudoriparous glands in the integument,

in very warm weather, enormous quantities of water are carried by the plasma and thrown off. During intense heat evaporation of moisture from the surface of the body is so great as to reduce the aqueous elements of the blood and tend to thicken it. Besides, its temperature is raised. In this condition copious draughts of water, both cold and hot, dilute the blood.

Water leaves the plasma, quite unchanged, with the exception of an admixture of chloride of sodium. Whether this, like hydrochloric acid in the stomach, is a product or secretion by the epithelia, or is abstracted