lence such doubts, and stamp the well-merited epithet of 'criminal,'
as above quoted, upon such attempts." [Brit. and For. Medical Review for
Jan. 1842, p. 112.]

From the cases given by Mr. Ingleby, I select the following. Two
gentlemen, after having been engaged in conducting the post-mortem
examination of a case of puerperal fever, went in the same dress, each
respectively, to a case of midwifery. "The one patient was seized with
the rigor about thirty hours afterwards. The other patient was seized
with a rigor the third morning after delivery. One recovered, one died."
[Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, April, 1838.]

One of these same gentlemen attended another woman in the same clothes
two days after the autopsy referred to. "The rigor did not take place
until the evening of the fifth day from the first visit. Result fatal."
These cases belonged to a series of seven, the first of which was
thought to have originated in a case of erysipelas. "Several cases of a
mild character followed the foregoing seven, and their nature being now
most unequivocal, my friend declined visiting all midwifery cases for a
time, and there was no recurrence of the disease." These cases occurred
in 1833. Five of them proved fatal. Mr. Ingleby gives another series of
seven eases which occurred to a practitioner in 1836, the first of which
was also attributed to his having opened several erysipelatous abscesses
a short time previously.

I need not refer to the case lately read before this Society, in which a
physician went, soon after performing an autopsy of a case of puerperal
fever, to a woman in labor, who was seized with the same disease and
perished. The forfeit of that error has been already paid.

At a meeting of the Medical and Chirurgical Society before referred to,
Dr. Merriman related an instance occurring in his own practice, which
excites a reasonable suspicion that two lives were sacrificed to a
still less dangerous experiment. He was at the examination of a case
of puerperal fever at two o'clock in the afternoon. He took care not to
touch the body. At nine o'clock the same evening he attended a woman in
labor; she was so nearly delivered that he had scarcely anything to do.
The next morning she had severe rigors, and in forty-eight hours she was
a corpse. Her infant had erysipelas and died in two days. [Lancet, May
2, 1840.]

In connection with the facts which have been stated, it seems proper to
allude to the dangerous an