"That an instrument, capable in its application of such wide-spreading mischief, should possess some compensating good, some power whereby diseases, hitherto obscure and intractable, should be compelled to render up the morbid secrets on which they rest, and to take their place amongst curable disorders, was to have been expected, and had this been so, the case would stand far differently.... "But unfortunately this is not the case; the diseases here alluded to, though obnoxious to its application, instead of being benefited are materially aggravated by its use; take, for instance, the scirrhous affections, in these cases its use is not only inefficacious, but positively injurious--it only adds torture to torment.... "Driven, then, from the field of real disease, these advocates of the Speculum are obliged to invest with a false character ailments that the profession has hitherto regarded as too trifling to admit of any save the simplest treatment.... The Speculum has been greatly extolled as the means of conveying appliances immediately to the parts affected. But it must not be forgotten that the effects of local remedies in constitutional affections are short-lived in the extreme, or that those can hardly be called remedies, that are notoriously so slow in their operation, as to leave it doubtful whether they have not, after all, been robbing time of the merit of the recovery. "That the profession is silent on these abuses is, in my opinion, to be deplored. Such silence may arise from the fear that the denunciation of them would tend to lower it in the estimation of the public, more than the continuance of the abuses themselves. Yielding to none in the desire to uphold the dignity of my order, I must say that I share in no such apprehensions. The public in return for the confidence they repose in us, have a right to such protection, and if they find that it has been withheld, that, in a mistaken solicitude for our own interests, we have neglected theirs, they will bind us all up in one common withe together, and the diploma, though it may still indicate the man of science, will cease to insure us the position of gentlemen."[32] The last extract which we shall give appears in the _Lancet_, a periodical whose very title is behind the age, indicative of professional bigotry, a record of antiquated fallacy and prejudice. The tide must surely be on the turn, or the exposure of these speculumizing villainies would never have been permitted to grace its columns:--