Page:The oath of Hippocrates.djvu/9



to meddle with the text must be set aside if an emendation can be proposed which will make sense of it and not conflict with other knowledge. He suggests that the passage should read —"I will not cut—not even those who ask it of me." The text might have been miscopied, an alteration such as has frequently been recognised, and of the sort illustrated by Douse in his analysis of examination papers. We at any rate get a meaning for, otherwise inexplicable, unless lithotomy was a special exception to Hippocratic practice. The emendation would be still more apposite if castration were meant; at least we know that under the Empire the consent of the victim did not free the operator from penalties, and Littré quotes the case referred to by Justin Martyr in which the governor of Alexandria refused his consent, even on the petition of the young man who desired it. But at best this is only a possible way of evading, not a certain one of meeting, the difficulty. Failing it, the passage must be surrendered as inexplicable, for conjectures about stony tumours and the like are mere idleness. The Hippocratic writings, even the most ornate, are too precise to sanction cryptic interpretations. A good deal might be said in favour of the guild spirit extending to surgeons respect for their speciality. The Arabs certainly placed the surgeon, as a mechanical person, in a low position. Old Burton does not take a high view of this branch of the profession (he called it "fulsome"), which was protected by legislation under Henry VIII. That it was not a popular calling may be inferred from the fact that, under that king, very few followed the speciality. There were only twelve surgeons in London, with, as estimated by Creighton, a population of 123,000 in 1581. The army of Henry VII. numbered 30,000, but it had only one surgeon and fifteen assistants.

Leaving then the prohibition of surgery as a question of propriety rather than of morality, we come to an equally perplexed question, though in a different way—that of abortion. This was commended when necessary, and that, not any abstract question of propriety, was the test for its induction. It was really in the hands of midwives, who, as Plato tells, might bring it on if necessary, and the fœtus young. The removal of the conception