e substituted the knife for the Arabist abuse
of the cautery; he investigated the causes of the failure of healing
by first intention; he described the danger of wounds of the neck;
he sutured divided nerves; he forwarded the diagnosis of suppurative
disease of the hip; and he referred chancre and phagedaena to "their
proper causes."

Anyone who knows the history of surgery and of supposed modern
progress in medicine will recognize at once that many of these ideas
of Salicet are anticipations of discoveries supposed to have been made
in the nineteenth century. The connection between dropsy and hardening
of the kidneys is a typical example of this. The fact that William
should have insisted that surgery cannot be learned from books is an
open contradiction {175} of what is so frequently said about
scholasticism having invaded the realm of medicine, and the study of
books having replaced the study of patients. It is not surprising that
with his study of cases William should have recognized the danger of
wounds of the neck, nor that he should have taught the suture of
divided nerves. It cannot fail to be a matter of surprise, however,
that he should have any hint of the possibility of union by first
intention, for that is supposed to be quite recent, and the knowledge
he displays of venereal diseases is supposed to have come into
medicine and surgery at least two centuries later.

Allbutt next takes up Salicet's great pupil Lanfranc. "Lanfranc's
'Chirurgia Magna' was a great work, written by a reverent but
independent follower of Salicet. He distinguished between venous and
arterial hemorrhage, and used styptics (rabbit's fur, aloes, and
white of egg was a popular styptic in older surgery), digital
compression for an hour, or in severe cases ligature. His chapter on
injuries of the head is one of the classics of medieval surgery.
_Clerk as he was_, Lanfranc nevertheless saw but the more clearly
the danger of separating surgery from medicine. 'Good God!' he
exclaims, 'why this abandoning of operations by physicians to lay
persons, disdaining surgery, as I perceive, because they do not know
how to operate ... an abuse which has reached such a point that the
vulgar begin to think that the same man cannot know medicine and
surgery... I say, however, that no man can be a good physician who
has no knowledge of operative surgery; a knowledge of both branches
is essential.' (Chir. Magna.