To the Editor:
—In The Journal, Dec 12, 1908 (li, 2058), appears an article by Dr. John A Hawkins, under the title given above. This method was described in the first edition of my book, which was published June 1, 1901. I also described another method, by which the ligatures, instead of encircling the jaws of the clamp, were put through notches and each tied as an interrupted suture before the clamp was removed. This is nearly the same as the second operation described by Dr. Hawkins.This continuous-suture method was not entirely original with me, as Dr. Earle of Baltimore described nearly the same operation in Matthews' Medical Quarterly, in 1896. Dr. Robert Jones of Liverpool used nearly the same method long before Dr. Earle's paper was written, the only difference being that Jones left, above the clamp, an eighth of an inch of the hemorrhoid, through which he