"I sent another patient to Dr. Robert Lee a few days ago (whom I had never seen) under similar circumstances, but moving in a different rank of life. The same opinion was given, the miserable patient suffering dire disappointment! "I recently attended a poor curate's wife, who had come to London for medical aid, at, as I suppose, great inconvenience. During my short attendance, this patient was constantly urged by a friend, a titled lady (the aristocracy always take the lead in quackery), to send for her physician, who is a strong abettor of the speculum. The course which followed may be imagined, and need not be described. A case of more complicated misery for a husband cannot well be conceived. A sickly wife, afflicted with uterine hypochondriasis, set upon by a titled advocate of the uterine quackery, with straitened resources. "The advocates of the speculum speak of cases which had resisted the efficacy of the usual general and local treatment, and which yielded to the use of the speculum and the caustic. I have seen cases in which, the speculum and caustic having been employed--and unduly employed, as I believe--the patient remained more miserably afflicted in mind and body than ever, and this the effect of that treatment. Whether the former supposition be as well founded as the latter, I will not presume to determine; but I believe the cases in which the young, and especially the unmarried, are afflicted, so as really to justify the use of the speculum, to be rare, and the cases in which the injection of a solution of nitrate of silver, by her own hands, may not take the place of the application of this valuable remedy in substance, by the hand of the practitioner, to be rare indeed. "I will not advert even to the epithets which have been applied to the frequent use of the speculum by our French neighbours, who are so skilled in these matters; but I will ask, WHAT FATHER AMONGST US, AFTER THE DETAILS WHICH I HAVE GIVEN, WOULD ALLOW HIS VIRGIN DAUGHTER TO BE SUBJECTED TO THIS 'POLLUTION'? Let us, then, maintain the spotless dignity of our profession, with its well-deserved character for purity of morals, and throw aside this injurious practice with indignant scorn, remembering that it is not mere exposure of the person, but the dulling of the edge of the virgin modesty, and the degradation of the pure minds of the daughters of England, which are to be avoided." _Dr Marshall Hall in the 'Lancet.'_ Dr. Dickson, an eminent medical reformer, and accomplished surgeon and physician, formerly on the staff, and now, and for many years past, in extensive practice in London, says:--