SECT. I.—PREFACE TO THE SURGICAL PART.
Having divided the treatise on the surgical matters into what relates to manual operations on the flesh, and the account of fractures and dislocations of bones, we shall begin with what relates to the flesh, observing there our accustomed brevity. Beginning therefore, again with the upper parts, we shall first give an account of the operations on the head, more particularly of the burning of the vertex.
Commentary. This book contains the most complete system of operative surgery which has come down to us from ancient times. We shall have occasion also to refer frequently to Celsus, who, in the last two books of his work, has treated of surgical operations with considerable accuracy. Our author appears to have been wholly unacquainted with him; but when did a Greek writer ever acknowledge himself under obligations to a Roman? Haly Abbas, in the 9th book of his ‘Practica,’ copies almost everything from Paulus. Albucasis gives more original matter on surgery than any other Arabian author, and yet, as will be seen from our commentary, he is indebted for whole chapters to Paulus. In the ‘Continens’ of Rhases, that precious repository of ancient opinions on medical subjects, if there be any surgical information not to be found in our author, it is mostly derived from Antyllus and Archigenes. As to the other authorities, although we will occasionally have to explain their opinions upon particular subjects, no one has treated of surgery in a systematical manner; for even Avicenna, who treats so fully of everything else connected with medicine, is defective in his account of surgical operations; and the descriptions which he does give of them are almost all borrowed from our author. The account of fractures and dislocations given by Hippocrates and his commentator Galen may be pronounced almost complete; but the information which they supply upon most other surgical subjects is scanty.