Foreign Department

Abstract

half-a-guinea, under the circumstances of the case, was more than I was justified in charging him. This brought his bill to £21. 5s.; and by the advice of Mr. Slack, a most respectable attorney, I arrested him for this amount. I had reason to know that he was a young man of property; but he pleaded poverty, and I consented to take £15, and give him his discharge. He then retums to Bath, trumps up a story, which, on the trial was proved to be false, that I had sent him in a bill for £2. 6s.; and his friends commence an action in the County Court for malicious arrest, laying the damages at £50. Not content to await the trial, the public-houses all over the city are made use of to circulate the grossest calumnies, and thus a strong feeling is excited against me. Confident in the justice of my own case, although I heard six medical men were to be brought forward by the plaintiff, yet, as I flattered myself that I stood pretty well with the profession, being conscious that I had never done a dishonourable action towards any one of them, I relied on their honour and integrity, and did not provide myself with a single medical testimony on my behalf. I was generously offered support (not by those who gave evidence in my favour on the trial, but by a gentleman of as high respectability and as long standing as any in the profession in this city), but I refused to allow another to share in the prejudice that had been raised. The trial came on, and then to my utter astonishment I found the medical witnesses deposing to the impossibility of the existence of such a complication of diseases as that for which I had made out a bill, and which I subsequently swore had existed in this case. Fortunately for me there were two gentlemen in court, Messrs. Bush and John Barrett, who had the manliness and generosity to stand forward when they saw an attempt made to crush a professional brother, and voluntarily gave evidence on their own experience that they had seen similar cases. I here beg publicly to thank them; and I tell them that I appreciate their conduct the. more highly because it arose from the spontaneous and unsolicited impulse of generous, manly, ancI independent feeling. But can I wonder at the verdict that was returned after the medical evidence for the plaintiff, that evidence being, as the Judge charged the Jury, " that they all agreed that they did not believe that the diseases which were specified on the face of the bill, ever could coexist in the samepatient. (See Bath and Cheltenham Gazette, September 8th, 1852.) Observe, the adverse medical evidence denied the possibility of the coexistence of gonorrhcsa and syphilis. With such evidence as this before them, the Jury could come to no other conclusion than that the bill was a concoction, and the whole transaction a fraud. My only wonder is, that with such extraordinary medical evidence against me, the Jury were bold enough to cut down the damages from £50 to £15. With regard to the bill, portions of which you have quoted, I must throw the responsibility of the form of it on my attorney, by whose direction it was drawn up and delivered to the plaintiffs attorney, on their application, after the action was commenced. In explanation of no bill having been delivered previous to the arrest, the simple answer is, that the patient never afforded me an opportunity of so doing, and I could not send it to his home without risking discovery by his mother of that secret he was so anxious to keep from her. There is another circumstance I must allude to. It is, as to the interlineation of the operations. This arose, as I explained on the trial, from the fact of the operations having been performed after the medicines had been ordered in the day-book, and I pointed out to the Judge and Jury many similar entries in the same book to other patients. Mr. John Barrett has since closely examined my day-book, and has publicly declared, in a letter to the Bath Journal, that "the internal evidence of the whole book supports Mr. Cox's statement as to the manner in which those entries were made." I have through him invited, and I here repeat the invitation, of an examination of my day-book to any member of the profession whose mind may not be satisfied on this point. This, Sir, is my case, as it stood after the trial, and here I should have been contented to leave it for the public to judge of it, with confidence that they would, on cool reflection, put a proper estimate of my conduct in this transaction, that they would remember it was no feature in my conduct to overcharge, overdose, or defraud; and that they would see I had been led into what might be considered extreme measures in order to prevent a dishonest and unprincipled man defrauding me of my due. But as it appears you make the chief point in the case to be the large quantity of medicine sent in, which, you say, gives a handle to the homceopath, let us see what this large quantity amounts to. Just one sixounce bottle and one powder per day. If this be an offence against legitimate practice, I much fear I sin in this respect in company with the greater portion of my medical brethren, and I must cry peccavi, and endure any reproach I may have incurred thereby. But, Sir, I have done. I have laid my case before the profession, and I neither fear what their verdict will be on my conduct, nor do I fear what will be the ultimate verdict of the public. I am, Sir, your obedient Servant, W. A. COX,