ut of the lecture-room, if once the teeming
intellect which nourishes theirs has been scared from its propriety by
any misshapen fantasy. Even an impatient or petulant expression, which
to a philosopher would be a mere index of the low state of amiability of
the speaker at the moment of its utterance, may pass into the young mind
as an element of its future constitution, to injure its temper or corrupt
its judgment. It is a duty, therefore, which we owe to this younger
class of students, to clear any important truth which may have been
rendered questionable in their minds by such language, or any
truth-teller against whom they may have been prejudiced by hasty
epithets, from the impressions such words have left. Until this is done,
they are not ready for the question, where there is a question, for them
to decide. Even if we ourselves are the subjects of the prejudice, there
seems to be no impropriety in showing that this prejudice is local or
personal, and not an acknowledged conviction with the public at large.
It may be necessary to break through our usual habits of reserve to do
this, but this is the fault of the position in which others have placed
us.

Two widely-known and highly-esteemed practitioners, Professors in two of
the largest Medical Schools of the Union, teaching the branch of art
which includes the Diseases of Women, and therefore speaking with
authority; addressing in their lectures and printed publications large
numbers of young men, many of them in the tenderest immaturity of
knowledge, have recently taken ground in a formal way against the
doctrine maintained in this paper:

On the Non-Contagious Character of Puerperal Fever: An Introductory
Lecture. By Hugh L. Hodge, M. D., Professor of Obstetrics in the
University of Pennsylvania. Delivered Monday, October 11, 1852.
Philadelphia, 1852.

On the Nature, Signs, and Treatment of Childbed Fevers: in a Series of
Letters addressed to the Students of his Class. By Charles D. Meigs, M.
D., Professor of Midwifery and the Diseases of Women and Children in
Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, etc., etc. Philadelphia, 1854.
Letter VI.

The first of the two publications, Dr. Hodge's Lecture, while its
theoretical considerations and negative experiences do not seem to me to
require any further notice than such as lay ready for them in my Essay
written long before, is, I am pleased to say, unobjectionable in tone and
language, and may be read without of