Page:The Hunterian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons in London, on the fourteenth day of February, 1821 (electronic resource) (IA b21483851).pdf/18

10 novel atid distinguishing, and will account for its being affirmed by Diodorus,* that he was the inventor of Surgery. His son Podalirius is the first person on record, who purposcly performed ‘Venesection; and Homer speaks of the importance of Machaon in the Grecian army before Troy, on account of his skill in the excision of darts. The boldness evinced by first and successfully employing the knife, probably contributed .much to extend the fame of ZEsculapius, and to confirm that confidence, first in himself, and his children who were inate by him, and afterward in ‘their descendants, which sccured to them ‘the large

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 * Diod. Sicul. L. v. ©, 74.