"On the use of the speculum in the diagnosis and treatment of uterine diseases, by Dr. Robert Lee, the author referred to the tabular statement of 220 cases of real and imaginary disease of the uterus, published in the 38th volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, and presented in a similar tabular form the details (of) eighty additional cases, which had since come under his observation. Of the 300 patients forty-seven were unmarried, one had barely completed her eighteenth year, several were under twenty, and the majority under thirty years of age, and were suffering from hysteria, leucorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, or some nervous affection of the uterus, without inflammation, ulceration, or any structural disease or displacement of the organ. In Case 256 the patient had been told that the womb was prolapsed and much ulcerated, and an instrument had been introduced for six weeks, with an aggravation of all the symptoms. The hymen was found so perfect on examination that it was impossible to reach the os uteri without using an unjustifiable degree of violence. On the ground of morality, and on every other ground, he could see no defence for the employment of the speculum in these forty-seven cases. Of the 300 patients seventy were barren, and the sterility was not removed, nor the other symptoms relieved in a single instance. SEVERAL OF THESE INDIVIDUALS SPOKE WITH HORROR AND SHAME OF THE TREATMENT TO WHICH THEY HAD BEEN SUBMITTED. A considerable number of the cases were suffering from cancerous disease, in all of which the symptoms seemed to have been aggravated by the treatment. In Case 236 the character of the disease was unmistakable, but after an examination with the speculum a favourable prognosis had been given, and the actual cautery employed for months, and hopes of recovery held out to the last. The author expressed his conviction that neither in the living nor in the dead body had he ever seen a case of simple ulceration from chronic inflammation of the os or cervix uteri; and to apply the term to states of the os uteri in which the mucous membrane or, as it is termed by some, the basement membrane, is not destroyed by ulceration, was an abuse of terms calculated only to deceive and mislead the members of the medical profession, from whom the truth has been carefully concealed. The speculum emanates from the syphilitic wards of the hospitals at Paris, and _it would have been better for the women of England had its use been confined to those institutions_."--The _Lancet_, July 25, 1857. Such is the language of earnest, honourable men, who have dared to dispel, by the light of true philosophy, the fog of "scientific" rascaldom--that empiric haze so desolating, so destructive to the inwrapped and blinded public. Few will deny that there are, in the foregoing extracts, sentiments which do honour to their authors, and revelations for which society should feel the deepest gratitude.