20 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.
the mortification spread or the patient die. He advises tying the large vessels after amputation, if it can be accomplished. Woodall asserts that for the twenty-four years during which he had been surgeon to St. Bartholomew’s, he had not lost a single patient from hemorrhage after amputation; and further, that for the fifty years in which he had practised surgery, he never once witnessed in England or elsewhere the cruel practice of burning the living stump.
Richard Wiseman, sergeant-surgeon to Charles II., appears to have been a pains-taking and candid man, well reputed in England, and unambitious of a higher reputation; possessing withal a right loyal confidence in the supremacy of the king’s touch in scrofula, a royal prerogative which had been exercised from Clovis and Edward the Confessor downwards.
His character, as the reputed father of English surgery, has been overrated. His attention was principally directed to the treatment of wounds, ulcers, and tumours. He was deeply tinctured with the superstitions and barbarities of the bygone times, a staunch friend to the cautery and red-hot knife, and the liniment prepared of live puppies steeped in boiling oil!
During the long protracted reign of Louis XIV., distinguished in the French annals for the elegancies that embellish peace, the splendour that emblazons victory, and the spiritual fascination, ‘l’art de se faire briller,’ of polished society, our noble art languished
