Having resolved some little time since to publish in this learned university a Dissertation which might serve as a specimen of my Medical Acquirements, the subject which appeared the most suitable to my purpose, is one, that may improve the art of surgery, which I practised for several years during the heat of the late bloody wars, and may at the same time wipe away the old aspersion, first broached at Rome against Archagates, and so often repeated since, that surgeons are executioners, who cut and burn without mercy. The cutting off a limb being the severest means employed in surgery for the relief of mankind, an operation which every one beholds with horror, I cannot, I imagine, more effectually accomplish my design, or do a greater service, than by demonstrating, _that the cases wherein amputation is necessary, are much less frequent than has been hitherto supposed, and that it may even be almost totally dispensed with_. SECT. II. My first thoughts on this subject arose from observing what passed under my own inspection in the military hospitals. In the first place I remarked, that in a very great number of cases, where amputation was judged necessary by the physicians and surgeons of the army, and even by the wounded themselves, in order to preserve life, it seldom or almost never answered the end. In the second place, I saw and had under my immediate care, a great number of patients whose limbs had been carried off by cannon balls, and in such a manner too, that all those who adhere to, and are afraid to deviate from established rules, would have performed a fresh amputation on the remaining stumps, whom I cured, as far as they were capable of being cured, without having recourse to such disagreeable means. And lastly; many others, whose limbs were not intirely separated off, but so much detached, wounded, shattered and contused, that the ablest surgeons deemed it necessary to take them wholly off, were nevertheless, by my endeavours, contrary to the general opinion, cured without amputation. SECT. III.