Epidemics. 237 



plastic, soft, and yielding than that of former times. Also 

 our large ovarian operations, and large incisions for different 

 objects through the abdominal walls, are less prone to run 

 into intense serous inflammation. The same was long 

 recognized among the nations of India, and the negro 

 populations in the West, who bore abdominal incisions and 

 recovered, when we rarely ever knew of an instance of the 

 kind. Hey, in his " Surgical Observations," gives one 

 instance of recovery in a woman after violent laceration. 

 In fact, our entire constitutional bias is more Asiatic and 

 African than it was ; we bear large and capital operations 

 much better, and if we are not well fed and sustained, we 

 sink and die off under them much more quickly than 

 formerly. 



Plastic operations, conservative surgery (anticipated, in a 

 measure, by Gooch and Hey), mechanical means for arresting 

 haemorrhage, as by accupressure, ligature by cat-gut, and 

 silver wire ; compression in aneurism, and a host of other 

 improvements, justly claim our admiration as so many 

 advances in modern surgery a science which in its palliative 

 and curative effects has far outstripped medicine ; and in 

 nothing has the gratitude of mankind to look back upon 

 with more unfeigned thanks than to its last two master 

 strides, anaesthesia and antiseptic appliances. Yet, with all 

 these improvements, the tolerance of the human constitution 

 to bear great operations, especially those which interfere 

 with serous membranes, has run remarkably parallel with the 

 decrease of tolerance to the bearing of blood-letting; and the 

 proneness to less violent and throbbing sthenic inflammation, 

 well described and illustrated by such authors as Alison and 

 Cooper ; whilst it is to be borne in mind that many of our 

 leading improvements in surgery anticipated ether and 

 chloroform, or carbolic acid and permanganate of potash, 

 and antiseptics generally. 



