of Pfolspeundt's work it was believed to be the oldest German treatise on surgery known. It was very freely illustrated with original woodcuts, not a few of which possess considerable artistic merit. (See accompanying reproduction.) The following headings of some of the more important chapters will convey at least a fair idea of the character of the book: "Definition of the Word 'Surgeon'"; "Anatomy"; "Fatality of Wounds in Different Parts of the Body"; "Different Kinds of Wounds"; "Different Kinds of Surgical Instruments"; "Different Modes of Ligating Blood-Vessels"; "Wounds of Blood-Vessels and Nerves"; "Methods of Arresting Bleeding"; "Foreign Bodies in Wounds"; "Treatment of Wounds Inflicted by Poisoned Arrows"; "Bruised or Crushed Wounds"; "Stab Wounds"; "Bites and Stings"; "Wounds of the Head"; "Operations for Hare-Lip"; and several other chapters on wounds and pathological conditions of other parts of the body. Syphilis is not once mentioned in the book; and from this circumstance von Gurlt infers that a knowledge of the existence of this disease had not yet, at that early date (1497), reached Germany. In Brunschwig's Liber pestilentialis, etc., however, which was printed three years later, syphilis is incidentally mentioned as the "malefrancose" or "malum mortuum." That Brunschwig was well informed in the earlier surgical literature is shown by the fact that he quotes from the writings of Theodoric, Guillaume de Saliceto, Guy de Chauliac, Henri de Mondeville, and many others. A hasty and necessarily very superficial perusal of the text of a few of the more important chapters of this remarkable book satisfies me that Brunschwig deserves to be classed among the really great surgeons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A copy of this rare book may be seen in the Surgeon-General's Library at Washington, D. C.
Heinrich von Pfolspeundt.—The earliest German treatise relating to surgery is that which bears the title "Buch der Bündth-Ertznei," by Heinrich von Pfolspeundt, "Bruder des deutschen Ordens." It was written in 1460, and was first published in printed form in 1868 by H. Haeser and
