THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. 19
in the preamble of which occurs the following passage:
"Also, how by the ignorance, negligence and unskilfulness of some such barbers, as well freemen of our aforesaid city, as of others being foreign surgeons, and not freemen of the same city, and daily resorting to the same city, and not being sufficiently skilled in the mistery of surgery; very many and almost infinite misfortunes have hitherto happened to divers of our liege people by such barbers and surgeons, through their defect of knowledge in healing and curing wounds, blows, hurts and other infirmities; by means whereof some of our liege people have gone the way of all flesh, and others, for the same cause, are so unsound and incurable as to be forsaken by all men; and it is to be feared that the like evils, or worse, may hereafter ensue in this behalf, unless some fit redress in the premises is by us speedily provided.”
John Woodall, a member of the Surgeons’ Company, was elected surgeon to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1612, and published, with a collection of his several works in 1639, a treatise on Gangrene and Sphacelus. He recommends amputation through the mortified in preference to the sound parts, having been first led to adopt this practice in a case without alternative, and asserts that he had since employed it in more than a hundred instances, in not one of which did
