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 is, 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 danger!
The present operators, when the two others had given up, were not, but by
leave of the French gentleman, called in.
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