This work contains a much greater variety of matter than its title implies, for it not only shews the inutility and danger of amputation, by several arguments, to which many others might be added; but not satisfied with levelling a tottering edifice, Mr. Bilguer frames and describes a plan for preventing and curing those accidents, which oblige surgeons to have recourse to amputation; and this is properly the most considerable and most essential part of the performance, which is, in fact, a treatise on gunshot wounds. I have scarcely done Mr. Bilguer justice with regard to style: I hope, however, I have given his meaning, without depriving it of its perspicuity or strength. This work will begin a new æra in Surgery, and will reach posterity. I should have been sorry in any shape to have disfigured it. It will give me very great pleasure, if the pains I have taken, and the notes I have added, prove agreeable to the author. He may be convinced that, being engaged in business as I am, his performance must have appeared to me extremely well executed, and much wanted, before I undertook to translate it. I am informed he has lately published a work on Surgery, in the German language; I am persuaded it contains much valuable matter: He seems to me to have a genius for discovering new expedients to lessen the sufferings of human kind. I would have given this book the title of a _Manual for the Surgeons of the Army_, which it deserves to be, were there not already another so called[1], which, although very little known, is by no means contemptible. The author had, even at that time, remarked that wounds of the tendons are not troublesome, owing to their want of sensibility, that the actual cautery is seldom proper; and some other facts, almost forgotten since that time. He describes wounds near the articulations with dislocation and fracture, he points out the accidents attending gunshot wounds, and, what deserves notice, he only admits of amputation in one case; namely, that of an incurable mortification, and mentions it as a cruel and doubtful expedient. I shall here cite his own words; they plainly shew that, if he lived in our time, he would be one of the most zealous encouragers of the new method, since he was so sensible of the defects, and grieved at the barbarity of the old. “If, unfortunately,” says he, “a mortification, from whatever cause it proceeds, gains ground in such a manner as to baffle all our care and applications, there is then no expedient left but that of taking off the limb; the success of which is very uncertain, for if it be dubious in a healthful subject, it must be much more so in one which is otherwise: It is, however, the only method, dreadful as it is, of putting astop to the ailment, and saving the rest of the body. This nevertheless ought not to be done, except when the consent, age and strength of the patient permit us to try so dangerous an experiment.”