To return from this digression. The most distinguished surgeons ever known in this country have shown us how to combine, in the highest degree, dexterity and skill, with science and humanity; together with a just estimate of the low position occupied by operations in the scale of our important studies. I may allude to two more particularly, Cheselden and John Hunter; the former, the most expert and successful operator of his day, in the European sense of the word, has left us a satisfactory declaration on this subject. Cheselden acknowledges that he seldom slept much the night previous to the day on which he had any important operation; but that, once engaged in operating, he was always firm, and his hand never trembled. John Hunter was not only a good operator himself, but he deduced from observation one of the greatest improvements in operative surgery. His discovery had all the elements of improvement that are possible in this branch of the profession. An operation which had been founded upon erroneous views of the nature and relations of the parts affected—which had been always tedious and painful in performance—which, whether successful or not, entailed much subsequent suffering, which in its results was highly dangerous, and which was very commonly followed by the loss of the limb or life,—was replaced by one founded on more correct views of the disease, easy and simple in its execution, occupying not more than a very few minutes, and which, so far as regards the purpose for which it was instituted, and to which it should be restricted, is almost invariably successful. If it be performed under circumstances implying conditions _contrary to those on which Mr. Hunter's operation was founded_, very different results have no doubt taken place; but, when properly applied, his operation for aneurism is no doubt one of the greatest improvements in operative surgery. John Hunter treats of operations in terms which show how low he rated that part of our duties. He speaks of them as humiliating examples of the imperfection of our science, and figures to himself an operator under the repulsive symbol of an armed savage. "No surgeon," said he, "should approach the victim of his operation without a sacred dread and reluctance, and should be _superior to that popular éclat generally attending painful operations, often only because they are so_, or because they are expensive to the patient"—p. 210. Abernethy, whose keen observation saw the difficult web which various sophistries, to use no harsher term, had thrown around the subject, was very characteristic in the manner in which he dashed it aside, and pointed to the salient source of error. "Never perform an operation," he would say, "on another person, which, under similar circumstances, you would not have performed on yourself."