terdict its study to his son, who died prematurely[1]; probably entertaining opinions similar to those which are expressed with such irreverent vigour by our Drydent[2]:
- “Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
- Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught;
- The wise for cure on exercise depend;
- God never made his work for man to mend.”
The treatise of Paulus, a native of Egina, who was a practitioner of surgery, and a travelled observer of its state and condition in the seventh century, contains the most complete body of the art on record previous to the revival of learning.
Paulus professes himself a compiler. He divides the tunica vaginalis in hydrocele, burns the fistula lacrymalis to exfoliation, distinguishes the hernia from rupture and from dilatation of the peritoneal sac, and operates only in the latter case, when he also extirpates the testis. After Hippocrates and Galen, he pronounces the sudden evacuation of the fluid in ascites fatal. He distinguishes the true and spurious aneurism, does not interfere with the larger arteries, but ties the superficial branches of the head and extremities above and below the wound or aneurism. He also describes, after Antyllus, the operation of bronchotomy.
