Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/518

 gangrene," and "septicaemia"; and in a separate short treatise which deals with the various ailments of young children, Wuertz mentions the fact that he once suffered greatly for ten days from an attack of migraine (hemi-*crania) and that he experienced marked and permanent relief only after the operation of arteriotomy had been performed upon his left temporal artery. In another part of the volume he expresses himself in terms which justify the belief that he must have performed amputation of the thigh on one or more occasions. He does not, it is true, furnish any details regarding the indications that point to the necessity of resorting to this operation, nor does he state how it should be carried out; he simply makes the remark, while speaking of the employment of the red-hot cautery iron in arresting hemorrhage, that "it is useful in amputation of a limb, particularly in the thicker part of the thigh, and occasionally in other places, as in the removal of a tumor by the use of the knife." So far as I am aware, Celsus was the first among ancient writers on surgery to say anything about amputations, and what he does say on this subject consists simply of quotations from still earlier writers—from Archigenes, Leonides and Heliodorus, surgeons whose writings no longer exist except in the form of detached extracts that appear in more modern treatises. The portions of text which Celsus quotes show clearly that the surgeons whom I have just named were in the habit of making flap operations in cases of amputation above the elbow and above the knee; and Archigenes even taught the advisability of first ligating the larger supply blood-vessels before one proceeds to the amputation of a limb.

From the remarks which Wuertz makes in one or two places it is easy to see that he was often not a little annoyed by the criticisms which his professional brethren made with regard to some of his methods of procedure. Thus, for example, he boldly declares that one's experience is of much greater value than any rule that may have been laid down by the ancients.

There can be no doubt, he says, that the ancients occasionally displayed great ignorance and great want of judgment, just as