Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/233

 ample evidence that the writer possessed both independence of judgment and the manual skill which belongs to a physician who is familiar with surgical work." He calls particular attention to the section (No. 88) which deals with the manner of removing the heads of arrows from wounds, and he gives special praise to Paulus for his most instructive account of the diagnostic signs to be looked for in a case of suspected wounding of a vital organ. He is extremely thorough, says Neuburger, in his teachings about fractures and dislocations, and he not infrequently differs from the views expressed by his predecessors.

In the section devoted to gynaecological operations Paulus makes it perfectly clear that he was in the habit of using a speculum of a very practical form. Here are his words:—

and, while the operator is holding the instrument in position, an assistant turns the screw until the blades of the instrument have been separated to the distance desired.

In other chapters of Book VI., Paulus furnishes most interesting and minute descriptions of a great variety of operations in general surgery and also in obstetrics, ophthalmology, otology and rhinology. Those who desire to learn further details about these surgical matters should consult the English version mentioned on a previous page.

It is not at all unlikely that at some future day it will be found desirable—by reason of the discovery of the treatises which they are known to have written, but which have been lost—to add to this short list of ancient medical authors the names of the following men who are frequently quoted by them in their works: Antyllus, who made some really valuable additions to our knowledge of the proper manner of treating aneurysms, and who must have been a surgeon of great resourcefulness; Leonides, the Alexandrian, who lived about the time of Galen, and who appears to have been highly considered for his practical common sense in the choice of surgical measures; Hesychios of Byzantium and his distinguished son, Jacobus Psychrestus, who was highly spoken of by his contemporaries