Extract of a lecture of corporal punishments, delivered to the students of military surgery in the University of Edinburgh, on the 23d of March 1847 / by Sir George Ballingall.

  • Ballingall, George, 1780-1855.
Date:
[1847]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Extract of a lecture of corporal punishments, delivered to the students of military surgery in the University of Edinburgh, on the 23d of March 1847 / by Sir George Ballingall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    dencies of predisposing, exciting, or proximate causes, to abide rigidly by the dictates of common sense, and to eschew all pro- fessional refinements into which it were impossible for a jury to fol- low me. Mr AVilson, in the course of his reply, enters again upon ground over which I have already f)rofessed my inability to follow him— the softening of the muscular tissue, analogous to the softening (ramollissement) of the brain. The hitter is an affection with which we are all familiar ; the former is to me altogether unknown. I have no inclination and no title to deny its existence, but I am entitled to say that after a period of upwards of forty years' service in hospitals, civil and military, I have never seen, and, until within these few months, never heard of such a morbid affection. I regret that the knowledge of such a degeneration of the muscular tissue, • - 111 has come upon me at a late period of life, when many valuable op- portunities of investigating its nature have passed away; and when the state of my eyesight, independently of other considerations, renders it now impossible for me to pursue with any advantage the slim unravellings of minute anatomy. I have repeatedly seen the superficial muscles of the back twittering under the lash, and I know something of the rupture of the long muscles of the extremities; but I have a difficulty in conceiving how a muscle like the multifidus spinae, peculiar in its structure, thickly covered by the superincumbent parts, and limited in its range of action, should be so powerfully affected as to lead to its rupture and subsequent degeneration. And here an important practical question presents itself. In cases of severe contusion it is not unfrequent for suppuration, and even sloughing, to go on in deep seated parts while the texture of the skin remains unbroken. But in a complicated injury of the super- ficial parts like that from flogging, consisting of laceration, contu- sion, and extravasation of blood, is it usual, oris it known, that such superficial parts recover themselves, and that this recovery goes on to a complete cicatrization of the skin, while such a morbid pro- cess as that described by Mr Wilson is going on below ? In opposition to my opinion of the infrequent connexion of cor- poral punishment, as infiicted in our mini/, with inflammation of the thorax, and in reply to my repeated demand for evidence of such connexion, I am referred to the testimony of Tiord Hardinge, the present governor-general of India, to that of KirckhofF, for- merly a physician in the army of the Netherliinds, and to the memorable case of sergeant Armstrong, as supporting Mr Wilson's belief, that diseases of the thoracic viscera are far from being an uncommon result of corporal punishment. It so happens that there is not a man in the British army, from right to left, for whom I entertain a more sincere respect than for Lord Hardinge, but upon a matter of professional opinion I shall not be expected to yield my judgment even to the matured experience of his lordship. But 18 Lord Hardinge's evidence upon this subject fully and fairly