which is the opening portion of Professor Allbutt's
address, has seemed to me to deserve quotation here. It will
illustrate a phase of the subject that is probably utterly
unexpected by those unfamiliar with the inner history of medicine
in our time, but which is not so surprising to physicians who know
the jealousy with which men guard their specialties from what they
consider the interference of others, in hospital work and in
teaching, though this exclusiveness often proves detrimental both
to the breadth of development of the student and to the good
health of the patient.

"It was, I think, in the year 1864, when I was a novice on the
Honorary Staff of the Leeds General Infirmary, that the unsurgical
division of us was summoned in great solemnity to discuss a method
of administration of drugs by means of a needle. This method
having obtained some vogue, it behooved those who practiced 'pure'
medicine to decide whether the operation were consistent with the
traditions of purity. For my part, I answered that the method had
come up early, if not originally, in St. George's Hospital, and in
the hands of a house physician--Dr. C. Hunter; that I had
accustomed myself already to the practice and proposed to continue
it; moreover, that I had recently come from the classes of
Professor Trousseau, who, when his cases demanded such treatment,
did not hesitate himself to perform paracentesis of the pleura, or
even incision of this sac, or of the pericardium. As, for lack not
of will but of skill and nerve, I did not intend myself to perform
even minor operations, my heresy, as one in thought only, was
indulgently ignored, and we were set free to manipulate the drug
needle if we felt disposed to this humble service."]

{197}

In conclusion, we may say that, in the Middle Ages, once men had
lifted themselves up from the condition into which they had been
plunged by the incursions of the barbarians, there was nothing like
the neglect of surgery which is sometimes said to have existed.
Surgery had its normal development, and reached as high a stage as
medicine in that beginning Renaissance, which is the characteristic
feature of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The
traditions of a low state of surgery at this time are all false and
founded on insufficient knowledge of the real conditions, which have
b