Again, medical men are frequently summoned as experts by opposing counsel, between whom there is known to exist personal animosities or professional jealousies. The usual result is anticipated by the legal gentlemen. The doctors contradict each other; the lawyers are delighted, the jury puzzled, and the Court is disgusted with medical testimony. An advocate will not infrequently subpoena his medical friends to testify in a given case. Testimony thus elicited is of necessity biased by the personal influence of the attorney and the _ex-parte_ statements of facts derived from the same source. The medical witness is thus led by a piece of legal _finesse_ to rebut the evidence of the experts on the other side, which he would have unhesitatingly endorsed in the consulting room. The doctor has perhaps satisfied a little ambitious egotism--he has assisted the attorney to win his cause; but he has done so at the sacrifice of personal dignity, professional unity, and the respect of both court and jury. _Biased_ expert testimony is a shame and a disgrace to our profession. It is infinitely baser and more ignoble than rank perjury, for perjury is often the child of fear, of hate, of avarice; but what language shall be found adequate to characterize a student of science, enlightened by education and refined by gentle associations, who can so far forget his duty to himself and society as to prostitute his knowledge to so ignoble a purpose? Again, medical men, after graduation, are prone to neglect the systematic reading of new books and journals. Their reading is desultory, and as the increasing demand of professional duties press them for time, they come to rely more and more upon their own experience, with an overweening confidence as to its entire accuracy. Now, no sane man doubts the value of _individual experience_. As well might you deny the value of a single dollar because it is only one. "I have been in practice twenty years," exclaims a neighbor, "and I speak from experience; I am right!" True to the extent of that one experience for twenty years; but suppose twenty other observers, who have systematically recorded their experience for the same length of time--who are at least your equals in the profession and vastly your superiors in their opportunities for observation--should have met with results adverse to your own, would you not pause ere you ventured to assert the accuracy of your knowledge under oath in a public tribunal? The experience of one man, though of incalculable value, is as naught to establish the truth or falsity of a principle; observations must be numerous and widespread, least the inductions therefrom lead to erroneous conclusions. The most successful ovariotomist is he who has never lost a case, but can it be truly said that he who has had but a single case, and saved it, is the man?