arless pursuit of truth you should find the world as ungracious in
the nineteenth century as he found it in the seventeenth, you may learn
a lesson of self-reliance from another utterance of the same illustrious
physician: "'T is none of my business to inquire what other persons
think, but to establish my own observations; in order to which, I ask no
favor of the reader but to peruse my writings with temper."

The physician has learned a great deal from the surgeon, who is
naturally in advance of him, because he has a better opportunity of
seeing the effects of his remedies. Let me shorten one of Ambroise
Pare's stories for you. There had been a great victory at the pass of
Susa, and they were riding into the city. The wounded cried out as the
horses trampled them under their hoofs, which caused good Ambroise great
pity, and made him wish himself back in Paris. Going into a stable he
saw four dead soldiers, and three desperately wounded, placed with their
backs against the wall. An old campaigner came up.--"Can these fellows
get well?" he said. "No!" answered the surgeon. Thereupon, the old
soldier walked up to them and cut all their throats, sweetly, and
without wrath (doulcement et sans cholere). Ambroise told him he was a
bad man to do such a thing. "I hope to God;" he said, "somebody will
do as much for me if I ever get into such a scrape" (accoustre de telle
facon). "I was not much salted in those days" (bien doux de sel), says
Ambroise, "and little acquainted with the treatment of wounds." However,
as he tells us, he proceeded to apply boiling oil of Sambuc (elder)
after the approved fashion of the time,--with what torture to the
patient may be guessed. At last his precious oil gave out, and he used
instead an insignificant mixture of his own contrivance. He could not
sleep that night for fear his patients who had not been scalded with
the boiling oil would be poisoned by the gunpowder conveyed into their
wounds by the balls. To his surprise, he found them much better than the
others the next morning, and resolved never again to burn his patients
with hot oil for gun-shot wounds.

This was the beginning, as nearly as we can fix it, of that reform which
has introduced plain water-dressings in the place of the farrago of
external applications which had been a source of profit to apothecaries
and disgrace to art from, and before, the time when Pliny complained
of them. A young surgeon who was at Sudley Church, labori