RELATIONS OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY 209 



talent who, like Gilbert, Harvey, or Darwin, were great enough to 

 be true to eye and hand, and to breed great conceptions by their 

 intimate coition with the mind? Shall we wonder then that medi- 

 cine fell into sterility when by most unnatural bonds surgery, her 

 scientific arm, was tied behind her, and her sight was turned inwards 

 from processes to formulas? Shall we wonder that even in the 

 eighteenth century, when medicine had begun tardily to occupy 

 itself in the crafts of pathology and chemistry, one visionary after 

 another, striding in long procession athwart the barren wilderness 

 of physic, wasted his generation in squeamish evasion of the things 

 that happen, and in vain pursuit of vacuous unities? Yet, if to the 

 high stomachs of our forefathers surgical dabblings were common 

 and unclean, still there remained some eyes curious enough and 

 some fingers dexterous enough to carry the art back to the skill 

 of Hippocrates, and forward to the skill of Lister; but it was by the 

 mouths of barbers and cutters, rather than of the pharisees of 

 the colleges, that medicine breathed her lowly message to her child- 

 ren. 



