 came readily into it. A great deal of matter had been collected, by means of the wrong methods pursued; and he proposed, if the patient's strength would bear it, to make an aperture below the principal wound, in order to discharge the matter downward; and he suggested the dressing with hollow tents and bandage, and to dismiss the large tents, with which they had been accustomed to distend the wound, to the extreme anguish of the patient, on pretence of keeping it open, to assist the discharge.
Let me now give you, my dear friend, a brief history of my Jeronymo's case, and of the circumstances

which have attended it; by which you will be able to account for the difficulties of it, and how it has happened, that, in such a space of time, either the cure was not effected, or that the patient yielded not to the common destiny.
In lingering cases, patients or their friends are sometimes too apt to blame their physicians, and to listen to new recommendations. The surgeons attending this unhappy case, had been more than once changed. Signor Jeronymo, it seems, was unskilfully treated by the young surgeon of Cremona, who was first engaged: He neglected the most dangerous wound; and when he attended to it, managed it wrong, for want of experience. He was therefore very properly dismissed.
The unhappy man had at first three wounds: One in his breast, which had been for some time healed; one in his shoulder, which, through his own impatience, having been too suddenly healed up, was obliged to be laid open again; the other, which is the most dangerous, in the hip-joint.
A surgeon of this place, and another of Padua, were next employed. The cure not advancing, a surgeon of eminence, from Paris, was sent for.
Mr. Lowther tells me, that this man's method was by far the most eligible; but that he undertook too much; since, from the first, there could not be any hope, from the nature of the wound in the hip-joint, that the patient could ever walk, without sticks or crutches: And of this opinion were the other two surgeons: But the French gentleman was so very pragmatical, that he would neither draw with them, nor give reasons for what he did; regarding them only as his assistants. They could not long bear this usage, and gave up to him in disgust.
How cruel is punctilio, among men of this science, in cases of difficulty and
