“But besides those whom I have mentioned as abusing the Speculum, there are others, who, more honest, yet not less dangerous, are, unconsciously perhaps, contributing their share to this work of demoralization; I mean that portion of the profession who, unable to form opinions for themselves, are ready at all times jurare in verba magistri, adopting any practice, provided the example be set in high places.... with these men one would like to deal charitably; but the best of motives must not be allowed to compensate the consequences of dangerous acts; they must not be allowed to jeopardise the modesty of the sex, so long the pride and the property of England.
“That an instrument, capable in its application of such wide-spreading mischief, should possess some compensating good, some power whereby diseases, hitherto obscure and intractable, should be compelled to render up the morbid secrets on which they rest, and to take their place amongst curable disorders, was to have been expected, and had this been so, the case would stand far differently....
“But unfortunately this is not the case; the diseases here alluded to, though obnoxious to its application, instead of being benefited are materially aggravated by its use; take, for instance, the scirrhous affections, in these cases its use is not only inefficacious, but positively injurious—it only adds torture to torment....
“Driven, then, from the field of real disease, these advocates of the Speculum are obliged to invest with a false character ailments that the profession has hitherto regarded as too trifling to admit of any save the simplest treatment.... The Speculum has been greatly extolled as the means of conveying appliances immediately to the parts affected. But it must not be forgotten that the effects of local remedies in constitutional affections are short-lived in the extreme, or that those can hardly be called remedies, that are notoriously so slow in their operation, as to leave it doubtful whether they have not, after all, been robbing time of the merit of the recovery.
“That the profession is silent on these abuses is, in my opinion, to be deplored. Such silence may arise from the fear that the denunciation of them would tend to lower it in the estimation of the public, more than the continuance of the abuses themselves. Yielding to none in the desire to uphold the dignity of my order, I must say that I share in no such apprehensions. The public in return for the confidence they repose in us, have a right to such protection, and if they find that it has been withheld, that, in a mistaken solicitude for our own interests, we have neglected theirs, they will bind us all up in one common withe together, and the diploma, though it may still indicate the man of science, will cease to insure us the position of gentlemen.”[32]
The last extract which we shall give appears in the Lancet, a periodical whose very title is behind the age, indicative of professional bigotry, a record of antiquated fallacy and prejudice. The tide must surely be on the turn, or the exposure of these speculumizing villainies would never have been permitted to grace its columns:—
“On the use of the speculum in the diagnosis and treatment of uterine diseases, by Dr. Robert Lee, the author referred to the tabular statement of 220 cases of real and imaginary disease of the uterus, published in the 38th volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, and presented in a similar tabular form the details (of) eighty additional cases, which had since come under his observation. Of the 300 patients forty-seven were unmarried, one had barely completed her eighteenth year, several were under twenty, and the majority under thirty years of age, and were suffering from hysteria, leucorrhœa, dysmenorrhœa, or some nervous affection of the uterus, without inflammation, ulceration, or any structural disease or displacement of the organ. In Case 256 the patient had been told that the womb was prolapsed and much ulcerated, and an instrument had been introduced for six weeks, with an aggravation of all the symptoms. The hymen was found so perfect on examination that it was impossible to reach the os uteri without using an unjustifiable degree of violence. On the ground of morality, and on every other ground, he could see no defence for the employment of the speculum in these forty-seven cases. Of the 300 patients seventy were barren, and the sterility was not removed, nor the other symptoms relieved in a single instance. Several of these individuals spoke with horror and shame of the treatment to which they had been submitted. A considerable number of the cases were suffering from cancerous disease, in all of which the symptoms seemed to have been aggravated by the treatment. In Case 236 the character of the disease was unmistakable, but after an examination with the speculum a favourable prognosis had been given, and the actual cautery employed for months, and hopes of recovery held out to the last. The author expressed his conviction that neither in the living nor in the dead body had he ever seen a case of simple ulceration from chronic inflammation of the os or cervix uteri; and to apply the term to states of the os uteri in which the mucous membrane or, as it is termed by some, the basement membrane, is not destroyed by ulceration, was an abuse of terms calculated only to deceive and mislead the members of the medical profession, from whom the truth has been carefully concealed. The speculum emanates from the syphilitic wards of the hospitals at Paris, and it would have been better for the women of England had its use been confined to those institutions.”—The Lancet, July 25, 1857.
Such is the language of earnest, honourable men, who have dared to dispel, by the light of true philosophy, the fog of “scientific” rascaldom—that empiric haze so desolating, so destructive to the inwrapped and blinded public. Few will deny that there are, in the foregoing extracts, sentiments which do honour to their authors, and revelations for which society should feel the deepest gratitude.
Were we to relate the numbers of weak and deluded creatures who, upon the slightest pretext, submit to this accursed rite, it would appear incredible. We know that one fashionable pretender to peculiar skill in the diagnostics of uterine affections, has boasted of five such examinations in one family in a single day! and that another has spoken of the exposure of fifty women to his professional gaze in the same space of time. These are facts—horrible, but undeniable, facts! “O shame! where is thy blush?” O woman! where is thy vaunted modesty, in a country tainted by such unspeakable and hideous mysteries, permitted—nay, tacitly encouraged—as they are, under the hypocritical guise of scientific discovery, and the pretended mitigation of human ills? Is it possible that in this age, and in this our land, men should be found so utterly insensate, so beggared of all feeling, so lost to all the chivalry of manhood, that, with this libidinous iniquity made patent, they would not arise, and, in one mighty and overwhelming surge of execration, crush its perpetrators, and abolish this obscene invasion of marital rights. No! perish the thought! The azure blood, which throbbed and pulsated in the British heart in those far off days of the second Richard, when the indecent outrages of the poll-tax gatherers lashed the people into fury at their daughters’ wrongs, still runs in the veins of Englishmen; and we will not believe that the halo of purity, which made the homes of “merrie England” the watchword of our sires, can have departed for ever from those of their descendants.