“In April, 1884, Dr. Graves of Petaluma, California, was called to see Mrs. Winters, the wife of a laborer whose family he had attended gratuitously for nearly sixteen years. He found that the woman, who was fifty-eight years of age, had fallen from a height and injured her ankle. The limb was very much swollen, so as to interfere with examination, but no crepitus could be elicited, neither was there any displacement, or shortening; and as the swelling continued, the limb was placed in position and wrapped loosely in cloth saturated with anodyne lotions. The patient, we are told, received every attention from Dr. Graves, but there was left finally some stiffening of the joint and a very slight inversion of the foot. No complaints were made until a new doctor arrived in the town, who told the patient the limb had been badly treated and advised her to sue for malpractice. The case was examined by ten of the chief surgeons in the State, including Drs. Lane, McLean, Morse and Dennis, all of whom said that there might have been a sprain or an incomplete fracture of the external malleolus, but that the ends of the bones were in perfect apposition and never had been separated, and that the stiffening was probably due to inflammatory adhesions. Two other doctors, one of whom being he who advised the suit, testified that there was shortening of the limb, and that the lower fragment of the tibia had been driven up and behind the fibula. One of these would-be surgeons, Dr. Wells, is nearly eighty years of age, and had not read a work on surgery for thirty years; the other, Dr. Ivancovich, confessed he had no special experience in surgery. Their incompetence may be judged from the way they measured the patient's limb in court. This was done by taking a carpenter's rigid rectangular rule, and measuring the limb as she maintained the upright position. The result was that in the opinion of nine jurymen the testimony of two unknown, inexperienced general practitioners out-weighed that of ten specialists in surgery, all of whom possess a national reputation, so that a verdict was returned in favor of the plaintiff, awarding her eight thousand dollars damages.”