There may, indeed, be persons who call themselves bone-setters, who are ignorant, presumptuous, and destitute alike of skill and experience, whose blunders are charged on the profession generally—there may be many such whose names are even in the Medical Registry—but no one can read the testimony of men beyond the reach of bribe, and who have no personal interest to serve, without admitting that there are Bone-setters who have both skill and experience as well as the ability to use their acquirements for the benefit of suffering mankind. The art, it is true, may not be taught in schools, but it is at least as old as Hippocrates, if not coeval with mankind’s “loss of Eden.” I have felt it a duty to myself, to my relatives, to my patients and friends, as well as to my fellow professors of the art to publish this testimony and vindication.
I have acknowledged as far as possible the sources from which I have taken the information in the following pages, if any have been accidentally omitted, I hope this apology will be sufficient. To those friends who have helped me with their advice and supervision of these pages I tender my warmest thanks, as well as to those patients who have offered their testimony to my own skill and success, and allowed me to add them to those collected from public sources for this book, as Turner wrote in his edition to “The Compleat Bone-setter” some two hundred years ago is not intended for Sutorian or Scissarium doctors, but I leave them amongst the Caco-Chymists, to boast of their arcanas, but not of their reason, whilst I shall modestly remain
GEO. MATTHEWS BENNETT,
Milverton, Leamington, Easter, 1884.
ERRATA.
Page 16, line 10, for “Captain” read “Copt.”
Page 32, line 14, for “hind” read “him.”
Page 85, line 4, for “former” read “latter.”
Page 123, line 10, for “hreak” read “break.”
Page 132, line 4, dele “which.”
Plate 4, Figure 18, “tibia and fibula” are misprinted for “ulna and radius.”