earned ; nor was this a childish vanity ; for he knew that neither the chance of birth nor the favour of a court had made him a Baron ;. but that the dignity had been bestowed by a discriminating hand which never conferred honours upon incompetency
or inefficiency. His arduous duties did not prevent him from
recording a multitude of facts selected from the myriads presented to his observation. Among the works with which he enriched surgical literature,
some of the best are— 1. A Memoir on Amputation of the Extremities
after Gun-shot Wounds.
2. An Historical and Surgical Account of the Expedition of the French Army to Egypt and Syria.
3. Memoirs of Military Surgery: an elaborate work in four volumes.
Among the valuable. principles which he estab- lished was the necessity of immediate amputation after gun-shot wounds, pointing out, with nice > discrimination, in what cases the operation was in- dicated. The propriety of immediate amputation had been advocated at intervals for two centuries ; but the large experience and strong sagacity of Larrey first raised it into a canon of military surgery.
Previously to his time, it had been a maxim of practice, when the extremities were invaded by spreading mortification, never to amputate till Nature had fixed a line of demarcation between the sound and gangrenous parts. He first showed that the rule, though general, ought not to be
