Sir Spencer Wells has given a graphic account of his early experiences.[10] “It would be difficult to imagine,” he says, “a position more disheartening than that in which I was placed when making my first trials of ovariotomy. The first attempt, as I have said, was a complete failure, and strengthened not only in the minds of others, but in my own mind, the fear that I might be entering upon a path which would lead rather to an unenviable notoriety than to a sound professional reputation. And if I had not seen increasing numbers of poor women hopelessly suffering, almost longing for death, anxious for relief at any risk, I should probably have acquiesced in the general conviction—have been content with palliative tapping, or making some further trials of incision and drainage, or of iodine-injection, or of pressure, rather than have hazarded anything more in the way of ovariotomy. It may be forgotten now, but it is true, that at that time everything was against the venture. The medical press had denounced the operation, both in principle and practice, in the strongest terms. At the medical societies the speakers of the highest authority had condemned it most emphatically. The example of the men who had practised it was not followed; some of them had given it up. Only once had a successful result been obtained in any of our large metropolitan hospitals, that by Cæsar Hawkins, at St. George’s Hospital, in 1846, and he never undertook it a second time. Every other attempt—at Guy’s Hospital by Morgan, Key, and Bransby Cooper, at St. Thomas’s by Solly—had ended in death.” In 1858 three cases were undertaken, and all with success, which did much to confirm Mr. Wells in his new practice. The fourth he lost, and to explain the cause he made some experiments upon animals, which led to important improvements in methods, yet during 1859 five out of eleven operations had fatal results.