other eyes than
mine, I wish to make one plain statement at the outset. The information
which is presented in these pages is wholly derived from the results of
bedside practice; pursued under miserable obstacles and interruptions,
and spread over a period of many years. Whatever faults and failings
I may have been guilty of as a man, I am innocent, in my professional
capacity, of ever having perpetrated the useless and detestable
cruelties which go by the name of Vivisection. Without entering into
any of the disputes on either side, which this practice has provoked,
I declare my conviction that no asserted usefulness in the end, can
justify deliberate cruelty in the means. The man who seriously maintains
that any pursuit in which he can engage is independent of moral
restraint, is a man in a state of revolt against God. I refuse to hear
him in his own defense, on that ground."

Ovid turned next to the section of the work which was entitled "Brain
Disease." The writer introduced his observations in these prefatory
words:

"A celebrated physiologist, plainly avowing the ignorance of doctors in
the matter of the brain and its diseases, and alluding to appearances
presented by post-mortem examination, concludes his confession thus: 'We
cannot even be sure whether many of the changes discovered are the
cause or the result of the disease, or whether the two are the conjoint
results of a common cause.'

"So this man writes, after experience in Vivisection.

"Let my different experience be heard next. Not knowing into what hands
this manuscript may fall, or what unexpected opportunities of usefulness
it may encounter after my death, I purposely abstain from using
technical language in the statement which I have now to make.

"In medical investigations, as in all other forms of human inquiry, the
result in view is not infrequently obtained by indirect and unexpected
means. What I have to say here on the subject of brain disease, was
first suggested by experience of two cases, which seemed in the last
degree unlikely to help me. They were both cases of young women;
each one having been hysterically affected by a serious moral shock;
terminating, after a longer or shorter interval, in simulated paralysis.
One of these cases I treated successfully. While I was still in
attendance on the other, (pursuing the same course of treatment which
events had already proved to be right), a fatal accident terminated my
patient's life, an