"Speaking of operations--" / by Irvin S. Cobb ... illustrations by Tony Sarg.
- Irvin S. Cobb
- Date:
- [1915], ©1915
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: "Speaking of operations--" / by Irvin S. Cobb ... illustrations by Tony Sarg. Source: Wellcome Collection.
59/78 page 49
![ness. This surely is one profession which ever keeps its face to the front. Burying its past mistakes and forgetting them as speedily as possible, it pushes straight for¬ ward into fresh fields and fresh patients, always hopeful of what the future may bring in the way of newly discovered and highly expensive ailments. As we look backward upon the centuries we are as¬ tonished by its advancement. I did a good deal of looking backwards upon the cen¬ turies during my sojourn at St. Germi¬ cide’s. Take the Middle Ages now—the period when a barber and a surgeon were one and the same. If a man made a failure as a barber he turned his talents to surgery. Surgeons in those times were a husky breed. I judge they worked by the day instead of by piecework; anyhow the records show they were very fond of experiments, where somebody else furnished the raw material. When there came a resounding knock at the tradesman’s entrance of the moated grange, the lord of the manor, looking over the portcullis and seeing a lusty wight [49]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29817675_0059.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
