n, Burns, Young, Hamilton,
Haighton, Good, Waller; Blundell, Gooch, Ramsbotham, Douglas, Lee,
Ingleby, Locock, Abercrombie, Alison; Travers, Rigby, and Watson, 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. It gives me pleasure to
remember, that while the doctrine has been unceremoniously discredited in
one of the leading Journals, 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. 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 bequeathed 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 outcast of the streets has pity upon her sister in
degradation, when the seal of promised maternity is impressed upon her.
The remorseless vengeance of the law, brought down upon its victim by a
machinery as sure as destiny, is arrested in its fall at a word which
reveals her transient claim for mercy. The solemn prayer of the liturgy
singles out her sorrows from the multiplied trials of life, to plead for
her in the hour of peril. God forbid that any member of the profession
to which she trusts