Read The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories Page 32


  XXVII.

  THE NEW ACCELERATOR.

  Certainly, if ever a man found a guinea when he was looking for a pin, itis my good friend Professor Gibberne. I have heard before of investigatorsovershooting the mark, but never quite to the extent that he has done. Hehas really, this time at any rate, without any touch of exaggeration in thephrase, found something to revolutionise human life. And that when he wassimply seeking an all-round nervous stimulant to bring languid people upto the stresses of these pushful days. I have tasted the stuff now severaltimes, and I cannot do better than describe the effect the thing had onme. That there are astonishing experiences in store for all in search ofnew sensations will become apparent enough.

  Professor Gibberne, as many people know, is my neighbour in Folkestone.Unless my memory plays me a trick, his portrait at various ages hasalready appeared in _The Strand Magazine_--think late in 1899 but Iam unable to look it up because I have lent that volume to someone who hasnever sent it back. The reader may, perhaps, recall the high forehead andthe singularly long black eyebrows that give such a Mephistophelean touchto his face. He occupies one of those pleasant little detached houses inthe mixed style that make the western end of the Upper Sandgate Road sointeresting. His is the one with the Flemish gables and the Moorishportico, and it is in the little room with the mullioned bay window thathe works when he is down here, and in which of an evening we have so oftensmoked and talked together. He is a mighty jester, but, besides, he likesto talk to me about his work; he is one of those men who find a help andstimulus in talking, and so I have been able to follow the conception ofthe New Accelerator right up from a very early stage. Of course, thegreater portion of his experimental work is not done in Folkestone, but inGower Street, in the fine new laboratory next to the hospital that he hasbeen the first to use.

  As every one knows, or at least as all intelligent people know, thespecial department in which Gibberne has gained so great and deserved areputation among physiologists is the action of drugs upon the nervoussystem. Upon soporifics, sedatives, and anaesthetics he is, I am told,unequalled. He is also a chemist of considerable eminence, and I supposein the subtle and complex jungle of riddles that centres about theganglion cell and the axis fibre there are little cleared places of hismaking, little glades of illumination, that, until he sees fit to publishhis results, are still inaccessible to every other living man. And in thelast few years he has been particularly assiduous upon this question ofnervous stimulants, and already, before the discovery of the NewAccelerator, very successful with them. Medical science has to thank himfor at least three distinct and absolutely safe invigorators of unrivalledvalue to practising men. In cases of exhaustion the preparation known asGibberne's B Syrup has, I suppose, saved more lives already than anylifeboat round the coast.

  "But none of these little things begin to satisfy me yet," he told menearly a year ago. "Either they increase the central energy withoutaffecting the nerves, or they simply increase the available energy bylowering the nervous conductivity; and all of them are unequal and localin their operation. One wakes up the heart and viscera and leaves thebrain stupefied, one gets at the brain champagne fashion, and does nothinggood for the solar plexus, and what I want--and what, if it's an earthlypossibility, I mean to have--is a stimulant that stimulates all round,that wakes you up for a time from the crown of your head to the tip ofyour great toe, and makes you go two--or even three--to everybody else'sone. Eh? That's the thing I'm after."

  "It would tire a man," I said.

  "Not a doubt of it. And you'd eat double or treble--and all that. But justthink what the thing would mean. Imagine yourself with a little phial likethis"--he held up a little bottle of green glass and marked his pointswith it--"and in this precious phial is the power to think twice as fast,move twice as quickly, do twice as much work in a given time as you couldotherwise do."

  "But is such a thing possible?"

  "I believe so. If it isn't, I've wasted my time for a year. These variouspreparations of the hypophosphites, for example, seem to show thatsomething of the sort... Even if it was only one and a half times as fastit would do."

  "It _would_ do," I said.

  "If you were a statesman in a corner, for example, time rushing up againstyou, something urgent to be done, eh?"

  "He could dose his private secretary," I said.

  "And gain--double time. And think if _you_, for example, wanted tofinish a book."

  "Usually," I said, "I wish I'd never begun 'em."

  "Or a doctor, driven to death, wants to sit down and think out a case. Ora barrister--or a man cramming for an examination."

  "Worth a guinea a drop," said I, "and more--to men like that."

  "And in a duel, again," said Gibberne, "where it all depends on yourquickness in pulling the trigger."

  "Or in fencing," I echoed.

  "You see," said Gibberne, "if I get it as an all-round thing, it willreally do you no harm at all--except perhaps to an infinitesimal degree itbrings you nearer old age. You will just have lived twice to otherpeople's once--"

  "I suppose," I meditated, "in a duel--it would be fair?"

  "That's a question for the seconds," said Gibberne.

  I harked back further. "And you really think such a thing _is_possible?" I said.

  "As possible," said Gibberne, and glanced at something that went throbbingby the window, "as a motor-bus. As a matter of fact--"

  He paused and smiled at me deeply, and tapped slowly on the edge of hisdesk with the green phial. "I think I know the stuff... Already I've gotsomething coming." The nervous smile upon his face betrayed the gravity ofhis revelation. He rarely talked of his actual experimental work unlessthings were very near the end. "And it may be, it may be--I shouldn't besurprised--it may even do the thing at a greater rate than twice."

  "It will be rather a big thing," I hazarded.

  "It will be, I think, rather a big thing."

  But I don't think he quite knew what a big thing it was to be, for allthat.

  I remember we had several talks about the stuff after that. "The NewAccelerator" he called it, and his tone about it grew more confident oneach occasion. Sometimes he talked nervously of unexpected physiologicalresults its use might have, and then he would get a little unhappy; atothers he was frankly mercenary, and we debated long and anxiously how thepreparation might be turned to commercial account. "It's a good thing,"said Gibberne, "a tremendous thing. I know I'm giving the world something,and I think it only reasonable we should expect the world to pay. Thedignity of science is all very well, but I think somehow I must have themonopoly of the stuff for, say, ten years. I don't see why _all_ thefun in life should go to the dealers in ham."

  My own interest in the coming drug certainly did not wane in the time. Ihave always had a queer little twist towards metaphysics in my mind. Ihave always been given to paradoxes about space and time, and it seemed tome that Gibberne was really preparing no less than the absoluteacceleration of life. Suppose a man repeatedly dosed with such apreparation: he would live an active and record life indeed, but he wouldbe an adult at eleven, middle-aged at twenty-five, and by thirty well onthe road to senile decay. It seemed to me that so far Gibberne was onlygoing to do for any one who took his drug exactly what Nature has done forthe Jews and Orientals, who are men in their teens and aged by fifty, andquicker in thought and act than we are all the time. The marvel of drugshas always been great to my mind; you can madden a man, calm a man, makehim incredibly strong and alert or a helpless log, quicken this passionand allay that, all by means of drugs, and here was a new miracle to beadded to this strange armoury of phials the doctors use! But Gibberne wasfar too eager upon his technical points to enter very keenly into myaspect of the question.

  It was the 7th or 8th of August when he told me the distillation thatwould decide his failure or success for a time was going forward as wetalked, and it was on the 10th that he told me the thing was done and theNew Accelerator a tangible reality in the world. I met hi
m as I was goingup the Sandgate Hill towards Folkestone--I think I was going to get myhair cut, and he came hurrying down to meet me--I suppose he was coming tomy house to tell me at once of his success. I remember that his eyes wereunusually bright and his face flushed, and I noted even then the swiftalacrity of his step.

  "It's done," he cried, and gripped my hand, speaking very fast; "it's morethan done. Come up to my house and see."

  "Really?"

  "Really!" he shouted. "Incredibly! Come up and see."

  "And it does--twice?"

  "It does more, much more. It scares me. Come up and see the stuff. Tasteit! Try it! It's the most amazing stuff on earth." He gripped my arm and;walking at such a pace that he forced me into a trot, went shouting withme up the hill. A whole _char-a-banc_-ful of people turned and staredat us in unison after the manner of people in _chars-a-banc_. It wasone of those hot, clear days that Folkestone sees so much of, every colourincredibly bright and every outline hard. There was a breeze, of course,but not so much breeze as sufficed under these conditions to keep me cooland dry. I panted for mercy.

  "I'm not walking fast, am I?" cried Gibberne, and slackened his pace to aquick march.

  "You've been taking some of this stuff," I puffed.

  "No," he said. "At the utmost a drop of water that stood in a beaker fromwhich I had washed out the last traces of the stuff. I took some lastnight, you know. But that is ancient history now."

  "And it goes twice?" I said, nearing his doorway in a gratefulperspiration.

  "It goes a thousand times, many thousand times!" cried Gibberne, with adramatic gesture, flinging open his Early English carved oak gate.

  "Phew!" said I, and followed him to the door.

  "I don't know how many times it goes," he said, with his latch-key in hishand.

  "And you----"

  "It throws all sorts of light on nervous physiology, it kicks the theoryof vision into a perfectly new shape! ... Heaven knows how many thousandtimes. We'll try all that after----The thing is to try the stuff now."

  "Try the stuff?" I said, as we went along the passage.

  "Rather," said Gibberne, turning on me in his study. "There it is in thatlittle green phial there! Unless you happen to be afraid?"

  I am a careful man by nature, and only theoretically adventurous. I_was_ afraid. But on the other hand, there is pride.

  "Well," I haggled. "You say you've tried it?"

  "I've tried it," he said, "and I don't look hurt by it, do I? I don't evenlook livery, and I _feel_----"

  I sat down. "Give me the potion," I said. "If the worst comes to theworst it will save having my hair cut, and that, I think, is one of themost hateful duties of a civilised man. How do you take the mixture?"

  "With water," said Gibberne, whacking down a carafe.

  He stood up in front of his desk and regarded me in his easy-chair; hismanner was suddenly affected by a touch of the Harley Street specialist."It's rum stuff, you know," he said.

  I made a gesture with my hand.

  "I must warn you, in the first place, as soon as you've got it down toshut your eyes, and open them very cautiously in a minute or so's time.One still sees. The sense of vision is a question of length of vibration,and not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kind of shock to theretina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the time if the eyes are open.Keep 'em shut."

  "Shut," I said. "Good!"

  "And the next thing is, keep still. Don't begin to whack about. You mayfetch something a nasty rap if you do. Remember you will be going severalthousand times faster than you ever did before, heart, lungs, muscles,brain--everything--and you will hit hard without knowing it. You won'tknow it, you know. You'll feel just as you do now. Only everything in theworld will seem to be going ever so many thousand times slower than itever went before. That's what makes it so deuced queer."

  "Lor," I said. "And you mean----"

  "You'll see," said he, and took up a little measure. He glanced at thematerial on his desk. "Glasses," he said, "water. All here. Mustn't taketoo much for the first attempt."

  The little phial glucked out its precious contents. "Don't forget what Itold you," he said, turning the contents of the measure into a glass inthe manner of an Italian waiter measuring whisky. "Sit with the eyestightly shut and in absolute stillness for two minutes," he said. "Thenyou will hear me speak."

  He added an inch or so of water to the little dose in each glass.

  "By-the-by," he said, "don't put your glass down. Keep it in your hand andrest your hand on your knee. Yes--so. And now----"

  He raised his glass.

  "The New Accelerator," I said.

  "The New Accelerator," he answered, and we touched glasses and drank, andinstantly I closed my eyes.

  You know that blank non-existence into which one drops when one has taken"gas." For an indefinite interval it was like that. Then I heard Gibbernetelling me to wake up, and I stirred and opened my eyes. There he stood ashe had been standing, glass still in hand. It was empty, that was all thedifference.

  "Well?" said I.

  "Nothing out of the way?"

  "Nothing. A slight feeling of exhilaration, perhaps. Nothing more."

  "Sounds?"

  "Things are still," I said. "By Jove! yes! They _are_ still. Exceptthe sort of faint pat, patter, like rain falling on different things. Whatis it?"

  "Analysed sounds," I think he said, but I am not sure. He glanced at thewindow. "Have you ever seen a curtain before a window fixed in that waybefore?"

  I followed his eyes, and there was the end of the curtain, frozen, as itwere, corner high, in the act of flapping briskly in the breeze.

  "No," said I; "that's odd."

  "And here," he said, and opened the hand that held the glass. Naturally Iwinced, expecting the glass to smash. But so far from smashing, it did noteven seem to stir; it hung in mid-air--motionless. "Roughly speaking,"said Gibberne, "an object in these latitudes falls 16 feet in the firstsecond. This glass is falling 16 feet in a second now. Only, you see, ithasn't been falling yet for the hundredth part of a second. That gives yousome idea of the pace of my Accelerator."

  And he waved his hand round and round, over and under the slowly sinkingglass. Finally he took it by the bottom, pulled it down and placed it verycarefully on the table. "Eh?" he said to me, and laughed.

  "That seems all right," I said, and began very gingerly to raise myselffrom my chair. I felt perfectly well, very light and comfortable, andquite confident in my mind. I was going fast all over. My heart, forexample, was beating a thousand times a second, but that caused me nodiscomfort at all. I looked out of the window. An immovable cyclist, headdown and with a frozen puff of dust behind his driving-wheel, scorched toovertake a galloping _char-a-banc_ that did not stir. I gaped inamazement at this incredible spectacle. "Gibberne," I cried, "how longwill this confounded stuff last?"

  "Heaven knows!" he answered. "Last time I took it I went to bed and sleptit off. I tell you, I was frightened. It must have lasted some minutes, Ithink--it seemed like hours. But after a bit it slows down rathersuddenly, I believe."

  I was proud to observe that I did not feel frightened--I suppose becausethere were two of us. "Why shouldn't we go out?" I asked.

  "Why not?"

  "They'll see us."

  "Not they. Goodness, no! Why, we shall be going a thousand times fasterthan the quickest conjuring trick that was ever done. Come along! Whichway shall we go? Window, or door?"

  And out by the window we went.

  Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had, orimagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that little raid Imade with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influence of the NewAccelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all. We went out by his gateinto the road, and there we made a minute examination of the statuesquepassing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horsesof this _char-a-banc,_ the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw ofthe conductor--who was just beginning to y
awn--were perceptibly in motion,but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quitenoiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat. Andas parts of this frozen edifice there were a driver, you know, and aconductor, and eleven people! The effect as we walked about the thingbegan by being madly queer and ended by being--disagreeable. There theywere, people like ourselves and yet not like ourselves, frozen in carelessattitudes, caught in mid-gesture. A girl and a man smiled at one another,a leering smile that threatened to last for evermore; a woman in a floppycapelline rested her arm on the rail and stared at Gibberne's house withthe unwinking stare of eternity; a man stroked his moustache like a figureof wax, and another stretched a tiresome stiff hand with extended fingerstowards his loosened hat. We stared at them, we laughed at them, we madefaces at them, and then a sort of disgust of them came upon us, and weturned away and walked round in front of the cyclist towards the Leas.

  "Goodness!" cried Gibberne, suddenly; "look there!"

  He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the airwith wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally languidsnail--was a bee.

  And so we came out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madder than ever.The band was playing in the upper stand, though all the sound it made forus was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged last sigh thatpassed at times into a sound like the slow, muffled ticking of somemonstrous clock. Frozen people stood erect, strange, silent,self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably in mid-stride, promenadingupon the grass. I passed close to a little poodle dog suspended in the actof leaping, and watched the slow movement of his legs as he sank to earth."Lord, look _here_!" cried Gibberne, and we halted for a momentbefore a magnificent person in white faint--striped flannels, white shoes,and a Panama hat, who turned back to wink at two gaily dressed ladies hehad passed. A wink, studied with such leisurely deliberation as we couldafford, is an unattractive thing. It loses any quality of alert gaiety,and one remarks that the winking eye does not completely close, that underits drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeball and a little line ofwhite. "Heaven give me memory," said I, "and I will never wink again."

  "Or smile," said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth.

  "It's infernally hot, somehow," said I, "Let's go slower."

  "Oh, come along!" said Gibberne.

  We picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many of the peoplesitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, butthe contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see. Apurple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violentstruggle to refold his newspaper against the wind; there were manyevidences that all these people in their sluggish way were exposed to aconsiderable breeze, a breeze that had no existence so far as oursensations went. We came out and walked a little way from the crowd, andturned and regarded it. To see all that multitude changed to a picture,smitten rigid, as it were, into the semblance of realistic wax, wasimpossibly wonderful. It was absurd, of course; but it filled me with anirrational, an exultant sense of superior advantage. Consider the wonderof it! All that I had said, and thought, and done since the stuff hadbegun to work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, so far asthe world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye. "The NewAccelerator----" I began, but Gibberne interrupted me.

  "There's that infernal old woman!" he said.

  "What old woman?"

  "Lives next door to me," said Gibberne. "Has a lapdog that yaps. Gods! Thetemptation is strong!"

  There is something very boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times.Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched theunfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violentlywith it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. Thelittle brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle or make the slightest signof vitality. It kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent repose, andGibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about with a dog ofwood. "Gibberne," I cried, "put it down!" Then I said something else. "Ifyou run like that, Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set your clothes on fire.Your linen trousers are going brown as it is!"

  He clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating on the verge."Gibberne," I cried, coming up, "put it down. This heat is too much! It'sour running so! Two or three miles a second! Friction of the air!"

  "What?" he said, glancing at the dog.

  "Friction of the air," I shouted. "Friction of the air. Going too fast.Like meteorites and things. Too hot. And, Gibberne! Gibberne! I'm all overpricking and a sort of perspiration. You can see people stirring slightly.I believe the stuff's working off! Put that dog down."

  "Eh?" he said.

  "It's working off," I repeated. "We're too hot and the stuff's workingoff! I'm wet through."

  He stared at me, then at the band, the wheezy rattle of whose performancewas certainly going faster. Then with a tremendous sweep of the arm hehurled the dog away from him and it went spinning upward, still inanimate,and hung at last over the grouped parasols of a knot of chattering people.Gibberne was gripping my elbow. "By Jove!" he cried, "I believe itis! A sort of hot pricking and--yes. That man's moving hispocket-handkerchief! Perceptibly. We must get out of this sharp."

  But we could not get out of it sharply enough. Luckily, perhaps! For wemight have run, and if we had run we should, I believe, have burst intoflames. Almost certainly we should have burst into flames! You know we hadneither of us thought of that... But before we could even begin to runthe action of the drug had ceased. It was the business of a minutefraction of a second. The effect of the New Accelerator passed like thedrawing of a curtain, vanished in the movement of a hand. I heardGibberne's voice in infinite alarm. "Sit down," he said, and flop, downupon the turf at the edge of the Leas I sat--scorching as I sat. There isa patch of burnt grass there still where I sat down. The whole stagnationseemed to wake up as I did so, the disarticulated vibration of the bandrushed together into a blast of music, the promenaders put their feet downand walked their ways, the papers and flags began flapping, smiles passedinto words, the winker finished his wink and went on his way complacently,and all the seated people moved and spoke.

  The whole world had come alive again, was going as fast as we were, orrather we were going no faster than the rest of the world. It was likeslowing down as one comes into a railway station. Everything seemed tospin round for a second or two, I had the most transient feeling ofnausea, and that was all. And the little dog, which had seemed to hang fora moment when the force of Gibberne's arm was expended, fell with a swiftacceleration clean through a lady's parasol!

  That was the saving of us. Unless it was for one corpulent old gentlemanin a bath-chair, who certainly did start at the sight of us, andafterwards regarded us at intervals with a darkly suspicious eye, and,finally, I believe, said something to his nurse about us, I doubt if asolitary person remarked our sudden appearance among them. Plop! We musthave appeared abruptly. We ceased to smoulder almost at once, though theturf beneath me was uncomfortably hot. The attention of every one--including even the Amusements' Association band, which on this occasion,for the only time in its history, got out of tune--was arrested by theamazing fact, and the still more amazing yapping and uproar caused by thefact, that a respectable, over-fed lapdog sleeping quietly to the east ofthe bandstand should suddenly fall through the parasol of a lady on thewest--in a slightly singed condition due to the extreme velocity of itsmovements through the air. In these absurd days, too, when we are alltrying to be as psychic, and silly, and superstitious as possible! Peoplegot up and trod on other people, chairs were overturned, the Leaspoliceman ran. How the matter settled itself I do not know--we were muchtoo anxious to disentangle ourselves from the affair and get out of rangeof the eye of the old gentleman in the bath-chair to make minuteinquiries. As soon as we were sufficiently cool and sufficiently recoveredfrom our giddiness and nausea and confusion of mind to do so we stood up,and skirting the crowd, directed our s
teps back along the road below theMetropole towards Gibberne's house. But amidst the din I heard verydistinctly the gentleman who had been sitting beside the lady of theruptured sunshade using quite unjustifiable threats and language to one ofthose chair-attendants who have "Inspector" written on their caps: "If youdidn't throw the dog," he said, "who _did_?"

  The sudden return of movement and familiar noises, and our natural anxietyabout ourselves (our clothes were still dreadfully hot, and the fronts ofthe thighs of Gibberne's white trousers were scorched a drabbish brown),prevented the minute observations I should have liked to make on all thesethings. Indeed, I really made no observations of any scientific value onthat return. The bee, of course, had gone. I looked for that cyclist, buthe was already out of sight as we came into the Upper Sandgate Road orhidden from us by traffic; the _char-a-banc_, however, with itspeople now all alive and stirring, was clattering along at a spanking pacealmost abreast of the nearer church.

  We noted, however, that the window-sill on which we had stepped in gettingout of the house was slightly singed, and that the impressions of our feeton the gravel of the path were unusually deep.

  So it was I had my first experience of the New Accelerator. Practically wehad been running about and saying and doing all sorts of things in thespace of a second or so of time. We had lived half an hour while the bandhad played, perhaps, two bars. But the effect it had upon us was that thewhole world had stopped for our convenient inspection. Considering allthings, and particularly considering our rashness in venturing out of thehouse, the experience might certainly have been much more disagreeablethan it was. It showed, no doubt, that Gibberne has still much to learnbefore his preparation is a manageable convenience, but its practicabilityit certainly demonstrated beyond all cavil.

  Since that adventure he has been steadily bringing its use under control,and I have several times, and without the slightest bad result, takenmeasured doses under his direction; though I must confess I have not yetventured abroad again while under its influence. I may mention, forexample, that this story has been written at one sitting and withoutinterruption, except for the nibbling of some chocolate, by its means. Ibegan at 6.25, and my watch is now very nearly at the minute past thehalf-hour. The convenience of securing a long, uninterrupted spell of workin the midst of a day full of engagements cannot be exaggerated. Gibberneis now working at the quantitative handling of his preparation, withespecial reference to its distinctive effects upon different types ofconstitution. He then hopes to find a Retarder, with which to dilute itspresent rather excessive potency. The Retarder will, of course, have thereverse effect to the Accelerator; used alone it should enable the patientto spread a few seconds over many hours of ordinary time, and so tomaintain an apathetic inaction, a glacier-like absence of alacrity, amidstthe most animated or irritating surroundings. The two things together mustnecessarily work an entire revolution in civilised existence. It is thebeginning of our escape from that Time Garment of which Carlyle speaks.While this Accelerator will enable us to concentrate ourselves withtremendous impact upon any moment or occasion that demands our utmostsense and vigour, the Retarder will enable us to pass in passivetranquillity through infinite hardship and tedium. Perhaps I am a littleoptimistic about the Retarder, which has indeed still to be discovered,but about the Accelerator there is no possible sort of doubt whatever. Itsappearance upon the market in a convenient, controllable, and assimilableform is a matter of the next few months. It will be obtainable of allchemists and druggists, in small green bottles, at a high but, consideringits extraordinary qualities, by no means excessive price. Gibberne'sNervous Accelerator it will be called, and he hopes to be able to supplyit in three strengths: one in 200, one in 900, and one in 2000,distinguished by yellow, pink, and white labels respectively.

  No doubt its use renders a great number of very extraordinary thingspossible; for, of course, the most remarkable and, possibly, even criminalproceedings may be effected with impunity by thus dodging, as it were,into the interstices of time. Like all potent preparations, it will beliable to abuse. We have, however, discussed this aspect of the questionvery thoroughly, and we have decided that this is purely a matter ofmedical jurisprudence and altogether outside our province. We shallmanufacture and sell the Accelerator, and as for the consequences--weshall see.