On the other hand, in Massachusetts, in an action for personal injuries, a surgeon who had attended plaintiff was held competent to testify as to plaintiff’s condition from what he saw, but not from anything the patient told him [242]. A physician testified that the plaintiff stated she had received a blow in the stomach. The Court said that it would clearly have been competent for the physician, after having testified to the plaintiff’s condition and to the complaints and symptoms of pain and sufferings stated by her, to have given his opinion that they were such as might have been expected to follow the infliction of a severe blow. But it was not competent for the physician to testify to her statement that she had received a blow in her stomach [243]. And in Tennessee, the statement made by a man when his wounds were being examined, as to who made them, or as to the instrument with which they were inflicted, was deemed inadmissible [244]. Memoranda, although not legal instruments in the proper sense of the term, have been considered as an inferior class of records, and as such entitled to some standing in courts. Such minutes of past facts may be used by experts while under examination, but only to refresh their memory, and not to take its place. For this purpose they may use written entries in note books, or even copies of them, provided always they can swear to the truth of the facts as there stated. Yet, if they can not from recollection speak to the fact any farther than as finding it stated in a written entry, their testimony will amount to nothing. It is not necessary that the writing should have been made by the expert himself, nor even that it should be an original |99| writing, provided, after inspecting it, he can testify to the facts from his own recollection [245].