PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE demand for a reprint of this work affords an opportunity of furnishing some additional facts relative to the communicability of syphilis in its secondary, as well as in its more advanced stages, and also on the subject of treatment-two points on which authors are still far from being generally agreed.

In reference to the first of these questions, my experience during the past six years has served to confirm the belief before expressed, that not only is the matter of secondary sores capable of reproducing disease of similar character by inoculation; but that lingering taints, the existence of which is scarcely, if at all recognisable by external phenomena, are also communicable through sexual, if not through other media, and thence liable to be continued in the offspring.

The recent experiments of Mr. Wallace leave no room to doubt the validity of this doctrine; and Dr. Waller of Prague has shown that, in order to reproduce the phenomena of secondary accidents by inoculation, it is by no means necessary to use the concentrated poison as met with in form of cutaneous deposit, but that a much more diluted state of it is quite sufficient: this pathologist having succeeded in implanting the disease by inserting the blood of an infected person on the

abraded skin of one previously in sound health. In the face of this fact, who will dare to say that the salivary and mucous secretions, or the cutaneous transpiration of a contaminated person, are innocuous?

On the subject of treatment the profession seem to be divided between the three methods practised severally by Mercury, Iodine, and Syphilization. The mercurial plan is that which has thus far afforded the most satisfactory results in my practice, and is indeed the only one upon which I would, guided by past experience, place any reliance; while the iodine preparations, without the aid of mercury, even when given to the fullest extent, have failed to produce more than amelioration of symptoms. Of syphilization I have no experience; but its sufficiency as a curative agent is thus far doubtful.

The last chapter is devoted to the consideration of the alleged injurious effects of mercury. The observations recorded, intended to elucidate this subject, will serve to show that the troubles commonly attributed to the action of this drug, existed previously in cases where mercury had never been used, and were manifestly due to the unsubdued morbid principle, as they entirely disappeared after the effectual employment of the remedy, and did

not return.

It is confidently hoped that, when the remedy now advocated shall have been more generally and efficiently tried, prejudice against it will cease to exist.

MANCHESTER, June, 1857.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THE study of uterine pathology is inseparably connected with the study of the phenomena of infant and embryonic life; and he who devotes attention to the first must of necessity have many opportunities of witnessing the order in which the various evolutional and developmental processes take place, and in what manner these efforts are sometimes marred, and not seldom frustrated, by the agency of malign influences originating in human error.

In the course of my investigations into the nature and forms of uterine diseases, some of the results of which were recorded in a treatise published in 1847, my attention was early and frequently attracted to the effects which constitutional disorders, especially those of a specific nature, existing in the parents, appeared to produce upon the reproductive organs and upon the offspring. A mother so tainted, or who was allied to an unsound husband, was seen to produce an unhealthy child; such women were also found, upon careful inquiry, to abort more frequently than others; and in many cases of barrenness, the taint was discovered to prevail in one or