APPENDIX. 93 



be convinced, as I was, that the cause of the principal symp- 

 toms was air in the cavity of the chest. Mr. Cheston himself, 

 in relating that case, came as near making the observation as 

 possible. 1 From this hint I prosecuted the subject, as is men- 

 tioned in that paper ; and before I published it, I consulted 

 every author I could easily procure, who I thought was likely 

 to treat of the subject. And I certainly should have done 

 justice to any that I found had anticipated me, and should not 

 have avoided the opportunity of doing you the same justice. 

 But I knew not, at the time of that publication, that you had 

 ever given the least hint on that subject. About the middle 

 of last summer I was told by a gentleman from Edinburgh of 

 your manner of treating me, at which I was not a little sur- 

 prised,- as I was not conscious of having given you the least 

 cause of complaint. But having since learned, from other 

 gentlemen who attended your lectures before the time of my 

 publishing that paper (and who, at my request, consulted their 

 notes) that you had really mentioned it, I cannot now doubt 

 that you had made the observation before me. At the same 

 time I must assure you, that to suppose I knew it at the time 

 of publishing that paper was doing me injustice. Your accusa- 

 tion, I presume, is founded on the supposition of my having 

 heard you deliver the observation at your lectures, when I had 

 the pleasure of attending them. But I do assure you, that if 

 I ever heard the least hint on that subject, either from you or 

 from any other person, I had not any remembrance of it at 

 the time I wrote that paper. You are not, indeed, the only 

 person who, as I now find, has anticipated me : the author of 

 the Monthly Review for last June 2 says he had long had the 

 same idea, and that he mentioned it in his account of Mr. 

 Cheston' s book. But of this too I assure you I was ignorant 

 when I wrote my paper. What must give farther conviction 

 to any unprejudiced person of my ignorance of your having 

 made the observation is this I first mentioned it in a paper 



1 I have since been informed by Mr. Cheston that I misunderstood his meaning^ 

 when I concluded that he explained the worst symptoms of the emphysema on dif_ 

 ferent principles from what I have done, and that he meant to attribute them to air 

 in the chest, and, therefore, that the observation was sufficiently made out in his 

 paper ; which see in his ' Pathological Inquiries and Observations,' pp. 7, 8. 



2 See Monthly Review for June, 1768, p. 446. 



