There is one point, in connection with the present Essay, to which I feel bound, in fairness alike to my professional brethren and to those for whom I have now written, to direct attention.
As every author who has decided opinions, and is alive to their importance, must naturally and very necessarily do, I have incidentally taken occasion to express myself upon certain collateral topics, but only in so far as they were directly connected with, and germane to, the main subject under discussion. Such statements are all of them to be considered merely as expressions of my own individual opinion, and not as the views, necessarily, of the mass of the profession.
An instance of the kind referred to is where I allude to the advantages of giving anæsthetics in child-bed, even though the labor is what is termed a natural one; and I adduce correspondence upon this subject in an appendix to the Essay.
As upon some of these questions physicians honestly differ among themselves, I have thought this disclaimer alike due to others and to myself; they are matters, however, only incidental to the Essay, upon the general subject of which the profession are wholly unanimous in opinion.
Hotel Pelham, Boston,
April, 1866.
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