CHAP. II. 



Of the Chtrurgery of the Ancients* 



I. XxS to the subject of this chapter, I cannot en. 

 tcrtain my reader better than by presenting him with 

 an extract of Mr. Bernard's thoughts upon it, who 

 was first surgeon to King William. Here follows a 

 faithful translation of part of a memoir, which he im* 

 parted to his friend Mr. Wotton. 



2. u If we attend well to what the moderns have 

 added to the surgery of the ancients, we shall be obliged 

 to own, that we have not the least right to despise 

 them, as those do who know nothing of them, nor have< 

 ever read them; and who give the strongest proofs of 

 their own ignorance and pride, in the manner wherein 

 they presume to treat those great men. I do not say, 

 that the moderns have in no respect contributed to the 

 advancement of surgery ; but what J say is this, that 

 the merit of the moderns consists rather in having re^ 

 introduced the inventions of the ancients, and set them. 

 in a better light, than in any important discoveries 

 that they themselves have made in this science. Whether 

 the arfc of curing wounds, falling immediately under the 

 observation of sense, has for that reason been the 

 study of the men of the earliest times, and by that 

 means sooner acquired a degree of perfection than the 

 other branches of medicine; or that the most part of 

 those who afterwards assumed the profession, were 

 mere empirics and ignorant of it: which ever of these 

 be the case, it is certain this art has not for some ages 

 past been cultivated as it might have been ; and to, 

 prove this, we need only to reflect how few the num. 

 * 5. 



