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TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER. 36!
I have had occasion to use blood, every year, both in lectures and
for the study of its chemical properties and of the effects of chemical
agents upon it. It has been obtained for me, most commonly, by some
student; I having requested any one who might have occasion to bleed
a patient. to save some of the blood, which he has brought to me, or
left on my table shortly afterwards. I have also before sent for it to
the Hospital.
Littlefield is mistaken in his statement, that I said I wanted the blood
for my lecture of the following day. He must have misunderstood me,
or have allowed himself to imagine, since my arrest, that I said so.
My expression was, that I wanted it to make some experiments for my
lectures; as was the fact. These experiments I proposed to exhibit
when lecturing upon blood, in connection with Animal Chemistry. Had
it been procured, I should have used a part of it, however,' at that time,
to show the effect of oxygen gas upon it which I was about preparing,
and also of heat. But the object I had in view was particularly con-
nected with the revision of my lecture on the blood.
It has been my habit to revise every one of my lectures every year.
There are upwards of sixty written lectures in my course. During the
year, in the course of my reading, I am in the habit of making
memoranda of any new facts, discoveries, and experiments announced
in the various scientific journals or new works on chemistry, which may
appear of sufficient importance to be introduced into, or referred to in
my lectures for the coming winter.
A few months before the lectures are to commence, I begin the
revision of my whole course, posting up, as it were, the various subjects
to that time. I take each lecture in the order in which it is to be deliv-
ered, and revise it fully, introducing any of the new facts, theories, and
experiments that may appear important; and sometimes so many new
results have been arrived at, that a lecture upon some subject must be
entirely re-written. Many of the new statements, theories, and results,
I satisfy myself about, by experiments; and repeat and familiarize
myself with new experiments which I may wish to show in the lectures in
the winter. Having every convenience and materials in my laboratory
in Boston, and none, of any extent, at home, I often go to the Medical
College during the summer, and while no lectures are going on, and
make the experiments or examinations required.
In consequence of much of my time having been occupied during
the summer of 1849 in removing all my minerals to the cabinet in Cam-
bridge, and in the entire new arrangement of the whole of the very
extensive collection, and in my lectures on Mineralogy and other engage-
ments, I had not completed the revision of my lectures on Chemistry,
at the time the medical course commenced.
There remained some six or eight lectures to be revised, and these
were upon Organic Chemistry,-the Chemistry of plants and animals.
Upon the revision of these I was engaged at the time of my arrest. The
lectures upon Milk, Urine, Blood, &c., were upon my table in my study,
and would have been found there by the officers, when, on the following
day, they made search. A few days after this, I directed my daughters
to place those lectures in a cupboard under my book-cases; and they
removed them from the table, and placed them, with the revised lectures,
in this cupboard, which was always used for this purpose.
I had been much interested in certain views recently advanced, in
regard to the development of electrical currents in animals and the effect
of the contact of acid and alkaline fluids in producing such currents,
which had been applied to the explanation of certain phenomena con-
nected with animal life; on the development of these currents by the
contact of the blood and muscles of animals-, &c. One of the experiments
on this subject which I had some time previously determined to try,
was to make a pile of pieces of pasteboard and animal muscle, the
pasteboard being soaked in blood; for it had been announced, that,
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