90 
ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS ON COW-SPAYING. 
Gamgee, of course, would select those most fit and proper to 
operate upon. His experiments, therefore, could not 
have been made under more favorable circumstances, and 
having appealed to persons capable of judging that the ope¬ 
ration “ deserves a fair trial” and apprising his readers that 
he was e£ engaged in testing 'practically the truth of all that had 
been asserted regarding it/* on which he promised (i to reportf 
on what ground can he justify his silence in withholding all 
information with respect to the results of the six operations 
he performed, having had the fullest opportunity to obtain 
most authentic particulars, which it was his duty to obtain, 
and which he must have obtained ? He may plead that he 
only pledged himself iC to report on the advantages accruing 
from spaying dairy-cows/ 5 and that he was not bound to 
report on the disadvantages , palpable and manifest as these 
were to him. If he had made a clean breast in testing the 
truth, to tell the actual results, I should have been spared 
what I have reluctantly undertaken—the task of publishing 
what he has suppressed. u The operation not only turned 
out a failure in every instance”—not one of the six cows con¬ 
tinuing in the same thriving state they were in before it—but 
1 was greatly within the mark in merely stating that ec all the 
six cows fell off, both in milk and condition /’ for spaying 
had the immediate effect, not of increasing the quantity of 
milk, as was asserted, but of almost wholly suppressing it, 
as the cows became, and continued afterwards, all but dry. 
The loss from this cause alone was estimated as approach¬ 
ing an average of £5 a head. Each of the cows was reckoned 
moderately worth £l 5, and there was a loss of £30, at the 
very least, caused by the operation, without taking into ac¬ 
count the fees charged by the operator. Thus a loss to the 
proprietor of the animals of nearly one half their value ac¬ 
crued from the operation. The proprietor was a man, fortu¬ 
nately of great wealth, and such a loss was, therefore, not felt 
by him ; but the infliction would have been a very serious one 
had the owner been a poor dairyman, dependent for his live¬ 
lihood upon the produce of his cows. The experiment having 
so unmistakably failed, a stop was put to Mr. Gamgee 
being further emplo} r ed in spaying any more of the stock, 
which would have yielded a rich harvest if the operation 
had realised the advantages which were held out by him in 
undertaking its performance. 
In writing out the narrative of the six cases, the account 
of three additional cases operated on by him escaped my 
memory, and I shall now supply the omission. They be¬ 
longed to the same stock, and they fell off, after being spayed, 
