paratively a rare incident in the practice of Confederate surgeons, this result being conspicuously due to the fact that the wounded were treated in open tents, or in hospitals unceiled or unplastered." Dr. Bell asserts, without having any evidence to sustain him, that this stetement is incorrect, and resorts to palpable misrepresentation or falsehood to try and destroy the truth of the writer's statements. The amusing part of this matter, however, constitutes one of those comic episodes of the many in Dr. Bell's lite, tending to show his gross ignorance and customary pretension. He says Chisolm asserts that tetanus cannot infect a hospital:" therefore ceiled hospitals cannot tend to the creation of tetanus. Was there ever such nonsense written by any medical man not wholly idiotic? The writer asserted the truth, known by every first-course student, that free ventilation and pure air tended to prevent tetanus. Poor Dr. Bell supposed that the writer attributed such freedom from tetanus in ceiled hospitals to the fact that there was no plastering; therefore there could be no infection, and if no infection, there could be no tetanus! Here is a comic and refreshing phase in the life of one who affects wisdom on this subject.

Were it not to expose these five falsehoods contained in Dr. Bell's last article, added to the five others, tacitly acknowledged, in his previous article, the writer would not now waste time or attention upon this pachydermatous fiction-monger further than to give him the benefit of the opinions of the medical press in regard to his enviable record; as, however, the pen is in hand for this purpose, it may be well to mention a few other falsehoods, small comparatively, but sufficient each to cover any one else with disgrace.

First, Dr. Bell asserts that the writer gives editorial notices for remuneration; they are called by Dr. Bell "percentage notices." This is one falsehood. Again he says that he has good authority for stating that the editor is writing "whimpering, whining letters to other editors, asking them to hold him up and condemn me." When asked, through a polite note borne by a friend, for his authority, he declines to make a personal matter of his assertion, and gives no authority. He avoids all personal responsibility for his falsehoods, yet he states that it is a calumny for the writer to state what he did state in the July supplement; that Dr. Bell uses "his gray hairs and his professions of religion as a shield to protect him in his coarse impertinencies."

Next, Dr. Bell says that the writer misrepresented the atrocious and ungentlemanly and obscene assault made by Dr. Bell upon Dr. Breckinridge through the columns of the daily press. The writer's comments were read to Dr. Breckinridge, and he will be pardoned for saying that, in a question of veracity between Dr. Breckinridge and Dr. Bell, he could not possibly attach any weight to the statements of Dr. Bell. Dr. Bell has been made to feel his error by the public, and he has in his last article played the part of the contemptible sycophant to Dr. Breckinridge and his friends.

Dr. Bell charges the writer with having asserted that he (Bell) was trained to the use of the "thimble." This falsehood is demonstrable to every one who has read what the writer has written. He has not said a word in regard to the "thimble" employment of Dr. Bell, for he thinks it was not only honorable, but suitable employment, and that it would have been far more honorable in its results had such an occupation never been abandoned.

Again, Dr. Bell, in his constant efforts to appear wise, states that the anecdote of the Brahmin student and the fly (quoted by the editor for the instruction of Dr. B. F. Dawson, of N. Y.,) is incorrect, etc. He says it is the old anecdote of "Uncle Toby," written by Lawrence Sterne. Poor Dr. Bell does not know that Sterne himself borrowed the story.

Finally, Dr. Bell makes the very truthful statement that he has avoided all personalities and that he has tried the writer "on his public positions alone." What can be said of one who makes use of such language, after writing fifty pages of abusive personalities, and after reading (as he admits) the writer's private correspondence to obtain

the means of making statements, the truth of which he is actually afraid to substantiate? Perhaps the severest lauguage that can be used in regard to Dr. Bell is that which he uses in regard to himself. He charges the writer with having selected him (Dr. Bell) for a topic, because he was writing for "those who have a penchant for luscious filth, and who can smack their lips over carrion."

As to the remainder of Dr. Bell's long article, it is only necessary to say that it consists of silly and childish criticism, or what Dr. Bell terms "peurile" criticism. A fair sample of the whole may be given. The writer stated that the war lasted "for four long years." In regard to this statement, this poor old simpleton says they were not long years, for we knew that those years consisted of just three hundred and sixty-five days," not 365 days each, but 365 days, including even the leap year. If Dr. Bell had been identified with either army in the field, with all the attendant trials, dangers, sufferings, wretchedness, disasters and sorrows, he would have indeed found those "long" years; but occupying, as he did, the comfortable, honorable, lucrative position of recruiting officer for negro regiments to be sent against Southern men, and the equally lucrative and distinguished position of grand high Janizary of "the draft," not to mention the reputable office of secret informer and persecutor of those amongst whom he had acquired all that he had ever possessed, it is not surprising that he did not find those years "long" years, but that they "consisted of just 365 days!" Ah! to the hearts of the million afflicted; to the sorrow-stricken; to the patriot; to the statesmen; to the brave soldiers; to those who hoped against hope, and toiled on when all hope had fled, those were indeed long, long years; but to the Janizary of the draft, and to the recruiter of negro regiments, they were just 365 days long! Had Dr. Bell been taught the moral, physical and mental lessons of bitter and terrible campaigns, he would not look back, as he does, to those days; days to him of personal gratification and pecuniary profit. He, however, had no campaigns other than those brief ones after the ludicrous "double-quick, without baggage," across the Ohio, whenever he heard that the "boys in gray" were over the border. If this facetious recruiting officer would recall those hours and days when he campaigned in Jeffersonville or New Albany because there was a rumor that the "boys in gray" were coming, he will not again allude in jest to the sadly true expression that those years of war were indeed "four long years!!"

One of the greatest absurdities known to the writer, as well as to Dr. Bell, is this assertion of Dr. Bell, in his article: "I am quite sure that there is no member of the medical profassion who dislikes and loathes professional strife more than I do; nor can any one more sedulously avoid giving occasion for anything of the kind." It is notorious that, for thirty years, the writer of that monstrous assertion has lost no possible occasion for attacking every one with his pen whom he thought he could attack with impunity. So far has this been the case that it is one of the chief causes of Dr. Bell's personal, professional and sceial failure in this city. He stands this day in Louisville a complete failure; and this failure is largely due to the very cause that he now affects to repudiate. It is in consequence of this vice that this poor man has now had the lion's skin, in which he essayed to array himself, cleanly stripped from him.

Some allusion must now be made to one of the most absurd and ludicrous events in Dr. Bell's very ludicrous history. In the writer's lecture on "The Medical and Surgical Lessons of the War," as published in the New Eclectic Magazine (Baltimore) for June, 1869), there occurs a few typographical errors, as the result of which one of the writer's own paragraphs appears as an extract, while several sentences from a lecture of Dr. Samuel Gross, of Philadelphia, which should have had the usual extract or credit marks(" ") are published as the original remarks of the writer. Dr. Bell, ignorant, most unhappily, of this fact, selects some of these sentences of Dr. Gross and supposing them to have been written by the author of the lecture under review, levels against them a sample specimen of his popgun fusilade. Some of his friends, recognizing the absurdity of his error

in criticising Dr. Gross, inform him of his foolish mistake, when the mortified and discomfited critic adopts the only redress in his power. He resorts to the expedient of publishing a postscript to the scurrilous pamphlet, which he then distributed generally to the professional and unprofessional throughout this city. This postscript was intended to convict the writer of plagiarism by containing on one side of a page the writer's language as published in his lecture and on the other side of the same page Dr. Gross' language as extracted by the writer from Dr. Gross' pamphlet. As the writer made the extract from Dr. Gross' pamphlet it is not very astonishing that the language of Dr. Gross and his own are identical. This Dr. Bell seizes upon and He did publishes as a gross plagiarism, monstrous conduct, etc., etc. not know that as soon as the writer's lecture was published in the Baltimore Magazine, June, 1869, he wrote to Dr. Gross regretting the typographical errors, and received from that gentleman the following note: PHILADELPHIA, June 29th, 1869.

MY DEAR DOCTOR: It was hardly necessary to send me an excuse for the printer's blunders in the Baltimore Magazine. No one who knows anything of your character would accuse you of unfairness in any thing. Wishing you health and prosperity, I am very truly your friend, (Sigued,)

#

笨

S. D. GROSS.

Dr. Bell, however, committed a still more silly blunder in this connection. When he supposed that he was criticising the writer's language, there were no terms of abuse sufficient for his purposes, but when he finds that the langnage criticised is from the pen of Dr. Gross, his sycophaney destroys his common sense, his judgment and his memory, and he eulogises in a mauner absolutely disgusting the very language that he had so violently condemned!! What honesty and what fairness there is in this honorable transaction!! What character and truth are here displayed!!

To place the writer, however, in a helpless condition, Dr. Bell states that even were there credit marks in the writers original manuscript there was nothing said when the lecture was delivered to indicate this fact. This may or may not be true. The writer does not know whether the extracts were then indicated verbally or not; but assuming that this was not done, he knew that bis lecture would certainly be published and that the credit marks would fully indicate all that was original and all that was not original in the material of which the lecture was composed.

It is certainly fair to try a lawgiver by his own laws, and if this is done Dr. Bell loses the last vestige of honesty and propriety thu he ever possessed. In the opening pages of his famous lecture on Se ndinavia (which he did not expect would be published) there is material extracted from a foreign source, yet, neither verbally nor in the published lecture, was this fact indicated-more than this; this lecture on Scandinavia is made up of material taken from well known works and from proof-sheets of a work in press, yet these facts are carefully concealed!!

When the writer promised, in late Journals, to amuse himself by noticing Dr. Bell and his curious caricatures of criticism, he did not know the moral character, the baseness of the man whom he has since nmasked and exposed. When an individual is detected in repeated faisehoods of the grossest character, when he makes constant false statements and denies all personal responsibility for them, there is but one course for a gentleman to adopt, and that is, to hold such a man up to the contempt of the public, and then to dismiss him, finally and forever, as unworthy of notice. This course is doubly imperative when such a person selects, as his publisher, as the bearer of his communications; one who has long since forfeited the respect, the confidence or the notice of gentlemen.

Drs. Bell and Bowling will of course reply, as they have been informed that they can do so with impunity, but these replies can never again secure the writer's attention. These worthies, unmasked as the authors of numerous and malignant falsehoods, have reached that condition, when it is impossible for the writer to respect or notice them.