Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/53

Rh or where the importance of not injuring the moral sense of students has not been recognised.

The great increase in ovariotomy, and its extension to the insane, is so notable a result of this prurigo secandi that it becomes a serious question whether the practice of ovariotomy, though sometimes beneficent, is not on the whole a disastrous discovery, and whether it should not be regarded as a confession of medical impotence, of insanitary education and social corruption, rather than as a satisfactory triumph of surgical skill. The destruction of motherhood is either a martyrdom or a degradation. In no case can it be boasted of as 'brilliant surgery.'

Dr. Chanu, in his carefully prepared thesis of