called for the public to send petitions to parliament to seek the abolition of flogging. Impact The outcome of the inquest led to arguments in the medical press over the cause of death. An unsigned article in the London Medical Gazette disputed the jury's findings and claimed that White had died because he was an alcoholic, though the author also thought that fifty lashes would have been a sufficient punishment. George Ballingall, Professor of military surgery at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in the Monthly Journal of Medical Science disputing Wakley and Wilson's impartiality and the quality of the evidence provided by Wilson. Wilson wrote a series of papers in the Lancet in which he claimed that much of the medical profession did not appreciate that the skin was an important organ capable of affecting the rest of the body. The case led to the foundation of the Flogging Abolition Society, chaired by Wakley, who first met in 1846. A ballad named The Flogging Excitement at Hounslow, that argued the cause for abolition, was popular around the time of the inquest. Its last lines were: Tied up hands and feet to a ladder, While the sound of the cat reached afar, Oh, Britain thy deeds make me shudder, Remember poor White, the Hussar Shortly after the inquest reported the commander-in-chief of the British Army, the Duke of Wellington, ordered that the maximum number of lashes be reduced to fifty. On 7 August the prime minister, Lord John Russell, was questioned in parliament over the continued use of flogging in the army. He stated that Wellington had ordered that all soldiers sentenced to be flogged be examined by medical professionals to check they were fit to be so punished and that the weather conditions at the time be taken account of. Russell stated that he looked forward to the time when flogging could be abolished in the army but that he and Wellington considered it necessary for the immediate future. He stated that his government had constructed numerous prisons for use by the army as an alternative to corporal punishment and that the proportion of men flogged each year had fallen from 1:108 in 1838 to 1:189 in 1845. He noted that the introduction of good conduct payments, pay rises in recognition of long service, the awarding of commissions to those in the ranks and the establishment of libraries, savings banks