APPENDIX. 95 



first who had proposed that improvement." Yet so unfair an 

 account does he give of it in his f State of Facts/ that he only 

 says I acknowledged that " I could not doubt he had made the 

 observation before; but the farther particulars of it (he adds) it 

 is needless to trouble the reader with, since as much as is neces- 

 sary of these will be sufficiently understood from his letter" in 

 answer to me, which surely is not the case ; for it nowhere ap- 

 pears in his letter that, besides mentioning my conviction of his 

 having anticipated me, I had likewise promised to do him justice 

 in a future publication. Nor does it appear in his letter that I 

 had in mine shown how little probability there was of my having 

 got the idea from him. These the reader may perhaps think 

 Professor Monro ought to have declared, in justice to me. For 

 what more could be expected of me, seeing I had by accident 

 hit upon an observation which, as it happened, he had made 

 before, than to acknowledge the priority of his title as soon as 

 I knew it, and to put that letter into his hands by which he 

 might always be sure of securing to hfmself what was his due. 

 But Professor Monro says it was unnecessary to give a fuller 

 account of my letter. But why was it so ? Not surely in 

 justice to me, nor for the satisfaction of the reader. Nay, so 

 far is Dr. Monro from doing me justice on this occasion, that 

 he even intimates I rejected tapping the chest with a trocar, 

 because it happened to be his method, as if the same was not 

 the method recommended by many of the writers on the sub- 

 ject of the paracentesis of the thorax, for the cases in which 

 they advise that operation, to whose method I alluded, and not 

 to his, which I then knew nothing about. 



Next, as to the discovery of the lacteals and lymphatics in 

 birds, fish, and the animals called amphibious ; of these an ac- 

 count was laid before the Royal Society on December the 8th, 

 1768. I was present when it was read, and had afterwards 

 some conversation on the subject with Dr. Donald Monro, who, 

 as appears by the sequel; informed his brother, the Professor, 

 of what I had done. Not long after this, I again saw Dr. 

 Donald at St. George's Hospital, and he then told me, that 

 the lymphatics and lacteals in those animals 1 had been dis- 

 covered by his brother eight years ago, as he now learnt by a 



1 Meaning birds and fish. 



