Commentaries on the Surgery of the War in Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands / from the battle of Roliça, in 1808, to that of Waterloo, in 1815; with additions relating to those in the Crimea in 1854-55, showing the improvements made during and since that period in the great art and science of surgery on all the subjects to which they relate.

The rapid sale of the fifth, and the demand for a sixth edition of this work, enable me to say that the precepts inculcated in it have been fully borne out and confirmed by the practice of the Surgeons of the Army now in the Crimea in almost every particular. To several of these gentlemen I desire to offer my warmest thanks for the assistance they have afforded. Their names are given with the cases and observations they have been so good as to send me, and a fuller “Addenda” shall be made from time to time, as I receive further information from them, and others who will, I hope, follow the example they have thus set. More, however, has been done; they have performed operations of the gravest importance at my suggestion, that had not been done before, with a judgment and ability beyond all praise; and they have modified others to the great advantage of those who may hereafter suffer from similar injuries. They have thus proved that if the Administrative duties of the Medical Department of the Army have not been free from public animadversion, that its practical and scientific duties have merited public approbation; which I am satisfied, from what they have already done, they will continue to deserve.

The precepts laid down are the result of the experience acquired in the war in the Peninsula, from the first battle of Roliça in 1808, to the last in Belgium, of Waterloo in 1815, which altered, nay overturned, nearly all those which existed previously to that period, on all points to which they relate. Points as essential in the Surgery of domestic as in military life. They have been the means of saving the lives, and of relieving, if not even of preventing, the miseries of thousands of our fellow-creatures throughout the civilized world.

I would willingly imitate the example lately indulged in, by many of the best Parisian surgeons, of detailing circumstantially the improvements they have made in practical and scientific surgery; the manner in which they were at first contested, and the universal adoption of them which has succeeded, were it not that I might run the risk of being accused of gratifying some personal vanity, while only desirous of drawing the attention of the public to the merits of the men who so ably served them in the last war, nearly all of whom are no more; and who have passed away, as I trust their successors will not, with scarcely a single acknowledgment of their services, except the humble tribute now offered by their companion and friend.

4 Berkeley Street, Berkeley Square,
October 7, 1855.