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habits orderly and business-like ; his constitution naturally robust, 

 and, till he reached old age, capable of great exertion and endurance. 

 These qualities, in circumstances so favourable to their exercise as 

 those of the Peninsular war, quickly and justly placed him in the 

 first rank of military surgeons, and accomplished a large amount of 

 good in the medical department of the Army. In after-life, the same 

 qualities, strengthened by success, ensured great influence for what he 

 taught, gained for him a large private practice in surgery, and made 

 him a man much to be considered in all the questions of professional 

 interest in which he was engaged. His influence on the progress of 

 medical science in his own time was that of an earnest advocate and 

 an attractive teacher of whatever appeared simple and straight- 

 forward in practice, and of all surgical doctrines that professed to be 

 based upon correct anatomy. In the future history of surgery, he 

 will be remembered for his advocacy of the use of nitrate of silver in 

 purulent ophthalmia, of large incisions in phlegmonous erysipelas, 

 of acid escharotics in sloughing phagedsena, and for the skill and 

 boldness of his treatment of gun-shot wounds. But, especially, his 

 name will probably be always mentioned with honour for his main- 

 tenance of the general necessity of tying wounded arteries at the 

 very seat of injury, above and below the opening. The usual practice 

 had been to tie the artery at some convenient part above the wound, 

 on the assumption that the arrest or diminished force of the circu- 

 lation would allow the firm closure of the wound, as it does the 

 obliteration of an aneurismal sac. Few things in modern surgical 

 works are equal in strength and clearness to the chapters in which 

 Mr. Guthrie proved the error of such an assumption, and the advan- 

 tages of his own mode of practice. In anatomy, his best work was 

 the bringing to general knowledge the musculi compressores urethrce, 

 which, though described by Santorini, had nearly ceased to be recog- 

 nized. In the medical department of the Army, his influence for 

 good was undoubtedly considerable. It may be difficult to enumerate 

 the improvements that were due to him ; but, as the last edition of 

 his best work the 'Commentaries on the Surgery of the War' will 

 prove, he was to the very end of life urgent in promoting the effi- 

 ciency of military hospital-establishments, and in maintaining the 

 reputation of the medical officers of the Army. 



