AN INTERESTING CASE OF MELANOSIS. 
207 
and closed, leaving no perceptible mark behind. To let the pus 
drain out, drop by drop, as the seton guided it, was to prolong the 
torture, and gain no other end. To leave the seton in till it had 
caused such inflammation as would obliterate the sac, was to allow 
suffering to continue; while the course of the discharge removed 
the hair, and when the tape was withdrawn two unsightly scars 
remained to tell of the pain that had been inflicted, for the space 
probably of months. 
Those, however, who proposed the seton, did so in perfect 
ignorance of the nature of the tumour; and had it been of any 
character other than it proved, of what use could the seton be ] 
Where was the good it was to produce, or how was it expected 
to act ] To me, I confess, the proposal would be ridiculous, were 
it not associated with animal suffering which renders it disgusting. 
I too well remember the pain and filth which these things 
have occasioned to laugh at any thoughts connected with such 
practices; but for the people who scrupled not to employ them, 
when ignorant of the substance on which they meant to operate, I 
unhesitatingly record my unmitigated contempt. 
That the tumour turned out to be melanotic the College autho¬ 
rities may view as unfortunate, though it was a stroke of luck 
which ordinary prudence might have anticipated; yet, if we con¬ 
sent to regard the circumstance as the effect of accident—the result 
of the merest chance—I still insist there is no possible condition 
to which the tumour was liable in which the seton could have been 
beneficial. Therefore, pardoning the Professors for not having 
imagined the real nature of the growth, and judging of what they 
have done by the state of their own knowledge and the limits of 
their own ideas, I accuse them of employing a means not answering 
to the end they proposed, and broadly assert that had they been 
right in what they thought, they would still be wrong in that which 
they have done. 
Putting the possibility of melanosis out of the question, there 
was, however, a circumstance the surgeon ought not to have 
despised when consulted upon the case. A blister had caused it 
to increase. A blister is but a mild irritant applied to a com¬ 
paratively distant part; but if such had been the consequence of 
its application, what result could any sane person have expected 
from so violent a measure as a foreign body thrust through the 
centre and allowed to continue in the middle of a substance which 
already had she wed its nature to be resentful of one of the mildest 
forms of interference] 
When the seton was inserted, and melanosis was discovered, 
then, immediately and without the loss of a single hour, operation 
should have been performed. After this—possible or impossible, 
