Transactions - 1879 Author:Illinois State Medical Society Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: brought out by the counsel for the defence. Drs. Hunt and Agnew testified that a person who has never been injured may present difference in length in the measur... more »ement of his own limbs; that this difference is the rule; that the range of difference is from nothing to an inch and a quarter: that nothing is the exception. After Dr. Agnew left the stand the plaintiff and counsel after holding a short consultation, abandoned the case. In a medico-legal sense this asymmetry in the length of the lower limbs is an exceedingly important discovery. In the paper quoted from, Dr. Wm. Hunt makes a claim of priority in the discovery and full surgical appreciation, of the fact that asymmetry as to length of the lower limbs of the same person is the rule and not the exception, and refers to the Philadelphia Medical Times of January 16, 1875, under the heading, "Clinical Notes and Reflections." Dr. Wight's first paper on the subject appeared in the Archives of Clinical Surgery, No. 8, February 1877. His second paper is in the Proceedings of the Medical Society of the County of Kings, January 21, 1878, and that of Dr. Cox in the American Journal of Medical Sciences, April, 1875. DISCUSSION. Dr. E. Andrews, of Chicago, remarked that the item in the report just read, relating to Asymmetry of limbs, is not new. More than twenty years since, while in charge of the dissecting-rooms of the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, he had made many measurements, demonstrating the frequent disparity in length of the lower extremities, the results of which were published at the time. He also thought more importance should be attached to the action of Ergot in the treatment of enlarged prostate glands than was implied in the report. He mentioned a case permanently cured, the Ergot being used in the form...« less