similar pronouncement made in any like representative medical body. The
authoritative value of this statement, accepted as undisputed by the
members of the association, which counts about fifteen thousand
practitioners, need not be emphasized.

"Dr. James Murphy ('British Medical Journal,' August 26, 1893), of the
University of Durham, made the presidential address. He first alluded to
the perfection to which the forceps had reached for pelves narrowed at
the brim, and the means of correcting faulty position of the fœtus
during labor. He then stated: 'In cases of great deformity of the
pelvis, it has long been the ambition of the obstetrician, where it has
been impossible to deliver a living child _per vias naturales_, to find
some means by which that child could be born alive with comparative
safety to the mother; and that time has now arrived. It is not for me to
decide,' he says, 'whether the modern Cesarian section, Porro's
operation, symphysiotomy, ischiopubotomy, or other operation is the
safest or most suitable, nor yet is there sufficient material for this
question to be decided; but when such splendid and successful results
have been achieved by Porro, Leopold, Saenger, and by our own Murdoch
Cameron, I say it deliberately and with whatever authority I possess,
and I urge it with all the force I can master, that we are not now
justified in destroying a living child; and while there may be some
things I look back upon with pleasure in my professional career, that
which gives me the greatest satisfaction is that I have never done a
craniotomy on a living child.'"

You will please notice, gentlemen, that when this distinguished Doctor
said, "We are not _now_ justified in destroying a living child," he was
speaking from a medical standpoint, and meant to say that such
destruction is now scientifically unjustifiable, is a blunder in