pitch was at hand, ready prepared, into which the bleeding stump was plunged. Between Scylla and Charybdis, the patient rarely escaped with life; either he died from loss of blood in a few hours, or less; or if the dreadful remedies succeeded, he survived a day or two, to die of fever or exhaustion. After an earlier method, that of Guido di Caulico (1363), a bandage of plaster was made to encircle the member so tightly that mortification attacked all the parts below, which then, after the lapse of months, dropped off, a horribly loathsome and offensive mass. Another surgeon, Botalli (1560), invented a machine to sever the limb in an instant by a single stroke; and it was not uncommon at this period to effect the same purpose by the hatchet, or by a powerful mallet and chisel.
It is to Ambrose Paré, the great French surgeon, who flourished in the 16th century, that we owe the application of the ligature (used long before in ordinary wounds) to the bleeding arteries in amputation. He discarded the use of the red-hot cautery, and of all the frightful adjuncts already described; and accomplished his purpose by carrying the thread round the vessel by means of a needle passed through the soft parts adjacent—a method of adjustment which, although still in use, is now employed only in exceptional instances. Richard Wiseman, sometimes styled the father of English surgery, who practised about the middle of the 17th century, is believed to have been the first to employ the ligature in our own country, and to relinquish the application of heated irons. At this era also, the circulation of the blood was discovered by the renowned Harvey, and the distinction between arteries and veins being thenceforth clearly understood, the value of the ligature was rendered more than ever obvious.
But enough of this: let us soothe our ruffled nerves by seeing how the thing is done to-day. We will take a quiet post of observation in the area of the operating theatre at one of our metropolitan hospitals, in this year of our Lord 1860. Notice is posted that amputation of the thigh will be performed at 2 o'clock p.m., and we occupy our seat ten minutes before the hour.
The area itself is small, of a horse-shoe form, and surrounded by seats rising on a steep incline one above another, to the number of eight or nine tiers. From 100 to 150 students occupy these, and pack pretty closely, especially on the lower rows, whence the best view is obtained. For an assemblage of youths between eighteen and twenty-five years, who have nothing to do but to wait, they are tolerably well-behaved and quiet. Three or four practical jokers, however, it is evident, are distributed among them, and so the time passes all the quicker for the rest. The clock has not long struck two, when the folding-doors open, and in walk two or three of the leading surgeons of the hospital, followed by a staff of dressers, and a few professional lookers-on; the latter being confined to seats reserved for them on the lowest and innermost tier. A small table, covered with instruments, occupies a place on one side of the area; water, sponges, towels, and lint, are placed on the opposite. The surgeon who is about to
