Note 924 — Chapter IX · THE CLERGY AND MONKS.

The extraordinary helplessness of early surgery is little appreciated by us, nor are we duly grateful for the advance in that most noble study which now secures to the lowest and poorest sufferer, alleviations once inaccessible to the wealthiest and most powerful. An example in point occurs to me in the case of Leopold, duke of Austria, the captor of Coeur de Lion, in 1195. A fall from his horse produced a compound fracture of the leg, which from the treatment it received soon mortified. Amputation was necessary, and it was performed by the duke himself, holding an axe to the limb, which his chamberlain struck with a beetle. “Acciti mox medici apposuerunt quae expedire credebant; in crastino vero pes ita denigratus apparuit, ut a medicis incidendus decerneretur; et cum non inveniretur qui hoc faceret, accitus tandem cubicularius eius, et ad hoc coactus, dum ipse dux dolabrum manu propria tibiae apponeret, malleo vibrato, vix trina percussione pedem eius abscidit.” Walt. Heming. i. 210. Wendov. iii. 88. We feel no surprise that death followed such treatment, even without the excommunication under which the savage duke laboured.