The principles of surgery / by John Bell.

  • Bell, John, 1763-1820.
Date:
1801
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of surgery / by John Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    to heal. Our great poet had no curfe more dreadful to put into the mouth of Ihe old king than this, ** Th' untented woimdings of a father's curfe pierce every fenfe about thee *. Among thofe who wrote againft this rude and violent pradlice, I might num- ber all the oldeft and moft refpedable furgeons. But although Paree fays, God knows the pleafure and profit too I have enjoyed from ufing tents more fpa- ringly f, no one was bold enough openly to declare his intention of joining the lips of a wound by dired: adhefion. A man propofing fuch romantic doc- trines, direftly and openly, would have been held in high contempt by the learned; but if he was bold and cunning enough to give an air of incantation to his cures, or to declare that they were performed by a fecret philofophical fym- pathy known to himfelf only, or to other very learned men, then he was fure of roufing at leaft one half of the learned world to combat in his caufe. We find in- deed no one fympathetic cure which is not performed plainly by procuring a fpeedy agglutination of the wound; nor one furgeon in Europe who ventured to unite wounds diredlly by adhefion, without pretending to have learnt from fome eail- ern fage, or to have found out by deep ftudies in philofophy and alchemy, a fympathetic, or, as they often called it, a philofophical cure of wounds. The firft inventor of the fympathetic powder was the celebrated Paracelfus ; and the firft who publifhed this fecret to the world was one Ericcius Mohyus of Eburo, who put forth a little book ; but in that book, fays Van Helmont, he hath negleded the detective faculty or virtue which may bring the virtue of the fympathetic powder, received in the bloody towel, into the diflant wound :|;. * Dr. Jackfon of Exeter nas taken up the trade of the black letter dogs •, and in his crhiclfm on this paiTage tells us, that it fhould be written as it was heretofore, Th' untender woundings of a father's curfe; that it is printed fo in the old editions very plainly ; and that it would be wafte of time to (how the propri- ety of this. There is no fuch word, fays Dr. Jackfon, as untented. Now, to. tell us that curfes are untender ; that a father's curfes are untender ; and that the curfes of a father, poured out. in the agony and bitternefs of his foul, are untender, is rather fuperfluous. But the irremediable woundings of a fa- ther's curfe, a wound fo deep that no furgery can cure it, is fomething. To fay untented, is as natural as to fay unanointed, unanealed. f Page 209. X This much celebrated author Van Helmont, he who with great benignity dedicates his book to God Almighty, is the panegyrift of Paracelfus, and his methods of cure. His dedication begins. Omnipotent, Eternal, Incomprehenfible Being. And concludes. So, O Lord! I call down this poor dedication before t}:y moft mighty throne •, and do thou, O my Interceflbr, offer up this my work to the Holy Trinity, where-