(From a hand, and work, manual operation). Surgery, or that part of medicine which consists of manual operations.

It was our intention to have comprised under the article of medicine a general history of that science, as well as of anatomy and surgery; and we consequently omitted in its proper place the particular history of the former. On contemplating the subject more nearly, we find that it will be too much broken by subjects which, though generally connected, yet branch into distant ramifications. As anatomy is perhaps more intimately connected with surgery than with medicine, we have therefore preferred giving a short sketch of the origin and progress of each in the present article.

Anatomy and surgery are the sciences of a rude warlike race; for however simplicity of diet and constant labour may preserve health, yet in this ruder state of society, wounds and bruises must have been frequent. If the nation were ferocious and often engaged in combat, the knowledge of the former would be more generally disseminated, and the practice of the latter more necessary. Thus each science was very early cultivated; and in Homer no slight knowledge of anatomy is displayed. The Egyptians, whom we generally compliment with the earliest advances in every science, often with little reason, were probably acquainted with the structure of the human body from their practice of embalming, and it is said that their kings left treatises on anatomy. If what Prosper Aipinus has described as their later practice was traditionally conveyed from the early ages, they had also made a considerable progress in surgery; but we have reason to believe that the greater part was taught them by the Greeks, as we know the practice of bleeding to have been. The Egyptians had their AEsculapius; whom the Greeks, in their usual method of appropriating every distinguished personage to their own nation, have transferred to Greece. After AEsculapius, we find the names of Chiron the centaur; Machaon and Podalirius, two sons of AEscu-lapius, mentioned by Homer; Thales, Empedoclus, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Democriius. The small circle of the philosophy of those days would not be gready crowded by the admission of anatomy and surgery; and we know that some of these philosophers assiduously cultivated the former study. We have the authority of Stephen of Byzantium for Podalirius having practised phlebotomy.

We can only judge of the ancient state of anatomy and surgery from the works of Hippocrates. He seems to have collected with great diligence all the observations of his predecessors, but his anatomy was general, and somewhat superficial. He is accused of dissecting brutes, and describing the organs of apes as those of the human race. Indeed this seems to have been true, if all, even the undisputed, writings attributed to him be really genuine. Yet many of these are evidently interpolated; and very few indeed have reached us without some ground of suspicion. His surgery deserves a better character. His remarks on ulcers and wounds, even at this time, merit attention; but his operations were few. He opened abscesses, penetrated the thorax to discharge any effused fluid, and the abdomen for the same purpose: the head he perforated with the trepan. His chief surgical operation was the actual cautery, which he recommends in a variety of diseases, and which modern delicacy or timidity has banished with loo little discrimination.

Various were the followers of Hippocrates, of whom we have received little more than the names, till the time of Diocles, at the distance of one hundred and thirty years from his era, and about three hundred and eighty years before the birth of Christ. He invented an instrument for extracting the point of an arrow sticking in a wound, and some bandages which, like the instrument, bore his name. The last of the Asclepiadean race was Praxagoras. He is recorded in desperate cases of ileus to have opened the abdomen and intestines in order to evacuate the faeces, and then to have sewed up the wounds in each.

The improvements in anatomy during this long period were probably few, at least scarcely any additional knowledge in this branch has been preserved. The era of the Alexandrian school has not been accurately ascertained; but its distinguished professors, Herophilus and Erasistratus, were minute anatomists, and many parts of the human body still preserve their names as discoverers. We have received their improvements only in the works of Galen, at the distance of three hundred and fifty years. They both practised surgery; and Erasistratus, who was a century earlier than Herophilus, opened the cavity of the abdomen in cases of diseased liver, to apply his remedies to the part itself. Asclepiades of Bithynia was the cotemporary of Erasistratus, and, as appears from Plutarch, an experienced surgeon; but his chief reputation arises from the revolution he occasioned in the practice of medicine, which is not our present object. Cassius, perhaps a scholarof Asclepiades, at least a cotemporary of his scholars, was apparently an able anatomist and a skilful surgeon; and Aretaeus, who lived near the time of our Saviour, was more distinguished for his medical abilities, than for anatomical or chirurgical knowledge.

Whatever was the era of Celsus, he is certainly the first author after the birth of Christ, who merits our regard. His style has been the admiration of ages, and in his collections he appears to have been diligent and attentive. It has been doubted whether he himself practised. From some parts of his works it is evident that he did, but not frequently, or probably in important cases. His seventh and eighth books are wholly chirurgical,but in these he treats chiefly of operations; for to these he seems to confine the office of the surgeon.