264 O. W. HOLMES 



Gooch, Ramsbotham, Douglas, 40 Lee, Ingleby, Locock, tt 

 Abercrombie, 42 Alison, 43 Travers, 44 Rigby, and Watson 46 many 

 of whose writings I have already referred to, may have some 

 influence with those who prefer the weight of authorities to 

 the simple deductions of their own reason from the facts 

 laid before them. A few Continental writers have adopted 

 similar conclusions. 48 It gives me pleasure to remember that, 

 while the doctrine has been ^unceremoniously discredited in 

 one of the leading journals, 47 and made very light of by 

 teachers in two of the principal medical schools of this 

 country, Dr. Channing has for many years inculcated, and 

 enforced by examples, the danger to be apprehended and 

 the precautions to be taken in the disease under consideration. 

 I have no wish to express any harsh feeling with regard 

 to the painful subject which has come before us. If there 

 are any so far excited by the story of these dreadful events 

 that they ask for some word of indignant remonstrance to 

 show that science does not turn the hearts of its followers 

 into ice or stone, let me remind them that such words have 

 been uttered by those who speak with an authority I could 

 not claim. 48 It is as a lesson rather than as a reproach 

 that I call up the memory of these irreparable errors and 

 wrongs. No tongue can tell the heart-breaking calamity 

 they have caused; they have closed the eyes just opened 

 upon a new world of love and happiness; they have bowed 

 the strength of manhood into the dust; they have cast the 

 helplessness of infancy into the stranger's arms, or be- 

 queathed it, with less cruelty, the death of its dying parent. 

 There is no tone deep enough for regret, and no voice loud 

 enough for warning. The woman about to become a mother, 

 or with her new-born infant upon her bosom, should be the 

 object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears 

 her tender burden or stretches her aching limbs. The very 



40 Dublin Hospital Reports for 1822. 



41 Library of Practical Medicine, i, 373. 



42 Researches on Diseases of the Stomach, etc., p. 181. 



43 Library of Practical Medicine, i, 96. 



"Further Researches on Constitutional Irritation, p. 128. 



45 London Medical Gazette, February, 1842. 



"See British and Foreign Medical Review, vol. iii, p. 52$, and vol. iv, 

 p. 517. Also Ed. Mcd. and Surg. Journal for July, 1824, and American 

 Journal of Mcd. Sciences for January, 1841. 



47 Phil. Med. Journal, vol. xii, p. 364. 



48 Dr. Blundell and Dr. Rigby in the works already cited. 



