REMARKS ON THE STETHESCOPE. 
377 
It is after considerable hesitation that I venture to make this 
communication; and I trust it will be attributed to the motive 
which alone actuates me, the desire I feel, in common with your- 
self, and the gentlemen more immediately alluded to, by adducing 
the fruits of professional engagements and the frank advocacy 
of our several opinions, to elucidate truth, and further the end 
to which your excellent periodical so efficiently contributes — a 
more scientific and successful practice. 
Apart from this my only purpose, the uniform courtesy and the 
many acts of kindness they have extended to me, as well as the 
high opinion I have formed of the j udgment and skill of the gentle- 
men on whose views I shall take the liberty of animadverting, would 
have kept me from broaching, in this form, opinions at variance 
with their own. 
Let me first advert to Mr. Baker’s intereresting essay on the 
Stethescope, given in “ Abstract” for 1837-8, p. 126. No one will 
dispute the beauty of the invention ; and, bearing in mind the many 
instances in which it has been successfully applied in the human 
subject, no one will say it ought to be lightly laid aside. Perhaps^ 
it must be conceded that, with some practitioners naturally endowed 
in a higher degree than others with the requisites to its successful 
use, it may yet prove, in very peculiar cases, a valuable agent : but 
at present, it appears to me (as was more than once observed in 
the course of the discussion, which took place at the meeting of 
the Association on the 13th March, 1838), that the serious diffi- 
culties and often imminent danger attendant on the application of 
the instrument, make against its utility. I was recently called in 
by J. G. Campbell, Esq. to ascertain whether his mare was in foal, 
and from reading the high recommendation of the stethescope, was 
induced to try it, at the great risk of being kicked or knocked 
down, and could make nothing of it. I then had recourse to my 
old and never-failing method of introducing my arm up the rectum 
(to which in my paper on " Diseases of the Spleen,” published in 
the Sporting Magazine, in the June number, 1832, I have made 
cursory allusion), a method which I have followed for more than 
twenty-five years, and one which, at least so far as I am aware, 
originated with myself, having never heard of its application before. 
I have always found it perfectly safe, and have never known any 
ill consequences to result from it. Examination by the vagina has, 
for obvious reasons, a tendency to produce abortion ; and I have 
known of two such cases arising from this practice. By my own 
method I have discovered the foetus three months after impreg- 
nation ; and it might, I think, be discovered sooner. Both before 
and after the foetus has left the pelvis, I have generally felt it 
lying across the pelvic cavity, the spine being immediately under 
