Whatever apprehensions and beliefs were entertained, it was plain that a
fuller knowledge of the facts relating to the subject would be acceptable
to all present. I therefore felt that it would be doing a good service
to look into the best records I could find, and inquire of the most
trustworthy practitioners I knew, to learn what experience had to teach
in the matter, and arrived at the results contained in the following
pages.
The Essay was read before the Boston Society for Medical Improvement,
and, at the request of the Society, printed in the "New England Quarterly
Journal of Medicine and Surgery" for April, 1843. As this Journal never
obtained a large circulation, and ceased to be published after a year's
existence, and as the few copies I had struck off separately were soon
lost sight of among the friends to whom they were sent, the Essay can
hardly be said to have been fully brought before the Profession.
The subject of this Paper has the same profound interest for me at the
present moment as it had when I was first collecting the terrible
evidence out of which, as it seems to me, the commonest exercise of
reason could not help shaping the truth it involved. It is not merely on
account of the bearing of the question,--if there is a question,--on all
that is most sacred in human life and happiness, that the subject cannot
lose its interest.
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