SURGERY is that branch of the medical profession wherein manual operations form part of the occupa tion of the practitioner, and during certain periods of its history constituted the exclusive department of the individual who professed it; being derived from xop, a hand, and fay', a work, whence it was termed chirurgery. This, however, will be better understood after we have detailed the history of surgery from the earliest ages.
History of Surgery.
Although there cannot be a shadow of doubt that surgery was coeval, if not prior to medicine, yet there is no account of any surgical operations be fore the siege of Troy, when that eventful strife immortalized in song the chirurgical deeds of Po dalirius and Machaon, the godlike sons of tEscu lapius, together with those of Patroclus, for in that memorable war, princes were as much renowned for their exploits in surgery as for those in battle.
£sculapius lived about the beginning of the Tro jan war, and was instructed in medicine and sur gery by Apollo, and Chiron the Thessalian, named also the centaur. According to Diodorus Siculus, he was the inventor of medicine and surgery, which were in great repute during the Trojan war; and he carried botany to perfection as well as the use of medicines and operative surgery ; at the dawn of medicine, all the departments of the medical profession were prastised by one individual, and that person frequently either a prince or a deified king.
It is supposed that the temples dedicated to /Es culapius were chiefly for his skill in surgery ; and Podalirius and Machaon according to Celsus, con fined themselves to the chirurgical part of physic, being the most ancient branch, as medicine, in the era of tEsculapius, 1263, before Christ, was chiefly practised by consulting the oracle at Pergamus. When we consider the restless spirit of man in the earliest ages, it is presumptive that wounds, frac tures, and luxations must have existed from the creation, and that consequently many surgical rem edies would originate nearly at the same period with man, for surgery and medicine must have been coeval with injuries and diseases inflicted on the human frame.
From the fall of Troy until the Peloponesian war, an interval of 700 years, and 431 before the Chris tian era, we have no accurate account of surgery ; it is only known that the Asclepiades, descendants of .Esculapius, exercised the art. The great Hip
pocrates, also a lineal descendant of iEsculapius, appeared at that time, and has handed down to us works not less celebrated in surgery than in medi cine. His writings, however, are more devoted to medicine than to surgery, having only composed chapters on fractures, diseases of the joints, ulcers, fistulas, hemorrhoids, wounds of the head and mid wifery, the genuineness of some of which are ques tioned by his commentators ; indeed, if we believe the singular oath which he administered to his pu pils, he despised operative surgery, for in that ex traordinary document he ordains, that " cutting for the stone I will not meddle with, but will leave to the operators in that way. He however used the lancet, the scarificator, the actual cautery, and the crotchet, and practised as a physician, a surge on, an accoucheur, an apothecary and even a nurse. He is also exceedingly bold in his directions to " ope rators in that way," for in calculus of the kidney he thus observes, " when however there is tumefaction in the region of the kidney, an incision ought to be made, and the calculus carefully extracted ; fur if this operation be not performed, there are no hopes of a cure, and the disease will prove fatal." The reason, says Meibomius, why Hippocrates would not allow physicians to treat calculus in the bladder, was simply because it was too difficult.
The surgery of Hippocrates has, to the misery of the sufferers, been implicitly followed by nearly all succeeding authors ; for as the great Bacon ob serves, authors have written, not that their works should stand as consuls, to give advice, but as dic tators; and as John Bell justly states, "most unfor tunately for science, Hippocrates wrote with such truth and brevity, with so sound and discerning a spirit of observation, and recited so carefully the signs of danger in all kinds of wounds and injuries, that he has been held in continual reverence, and holds an influence over the profession even to the present hour." His directions for the treatment of fractures are very unscientific, and even cruel, when we consider his extension and machines ; his treatment of injuries of the head may be said to be both inert and cruel, inert as regards active blood letting, and cruel in trephining for every fissure or crack of the skull.