When _I_ have mistaken the femoral artery for the profunda; when _I_ have taken up arteries in amputation before sawing off the bone; and when, in attempting to perform the operation of Lithotomy, _I_ have been forced to abandon it, publicly to attempt an explanation in apology for the blunder, and then obliged to leave it, to see whether THE STONE WOULD COME AWAY OF ITSELF! or be, as is perpetually the case on similar occasions, privately extracted by another—when I have done all this, and made myself an object of laughter even to the youngest pupil—then, then I shall cease even to speak of Surgery or Medicine. I have now only to add a few words concerning the necessity of such precise methods of operation in the present military state of Europe. * * * * * While such important operations remain in so vague a state, what ease would not such measurements confer, when, in the cockpit of the man of war or on the field of battle, the perplexed and bewildered surgeon knows not where to turn him, but must leave an hundred operations in an hour to an unexperienced assistant. At a time, when a successful conspiracy of adventurous ruffians are, at the point of the bayonet, establishing, from the Don to the Douro, from the Scheldt to the Cattarro, over all the fairest provinces of Europe, the most dreadful of military despotisms;—at a time, when, to the shout “Avance, Avance,” louder and more tremendous than the noise of their guns, the myriad legions of France are carrying death and destruction before them, and sweeping together man and civilization from the face of the Continent;—at a time, when he who has “sceptres tipt with coronets for his pallisadoes, kingdoms for his martello towers and kings for his centinels,” threats at once the liberties and the existence of Britain, and stains every step of his career with perfidy and blood;—at a time, when it is the duty—it is the wish of every man of honour successfully to defend, or, covered with wounds, nobly to die for the liberties of Britain and the emancipation of Europe—when all this is the case, what are not his duties whose sole profession it is, aided by science, to rescue from death or agony those whom tyranny has attempted to destroy, the genius of whose god-like art it is to save both friends and foes; and, upon whose knowledge, the existence and the fate of armies may, in no small degree, be said to depend. Never were the duties of the military surgeon more complex or more formidable. Never did he stand in need of greater precision. And, in his art at least, he ought to recollect that no commissions are sold—the precisest knowledge alone entitles to—infallibly secures, pre-eminence and fortune. _POSTSCRIPT._