The Peril of the Republic of the United States of America - Percy T. Magan

surgery behind their medicine. Albucasis, of
Cordova, shrinks not from the performance of the
most formidable operations in his own and in the
obstetrical art; the actual cautery and the knife are
used without hesitation. He has left us ample
description of the surgical instruments then
employed; and from him we learn that, in
operations on females in which considerations of
delicacy intervened, the services of properly
instructed women were secured. How different was
all this from the state of things in Europe; the
Christian peasant, fever-stricken, or overtaken by
accident, hied to the nearest saint-shrine, and
expected a miracle; the Spanish Moor relied upon
the prescription or lancet of his physician, or the
bandage and knife of his surgeon.
“Our obligations to the Spanish Moors in the
arts of life are even more marked than in the higher
branches of science. They set an example of skilful
agriculture, the practise of which was regulated by
a code of laws. Not only did they attend to the
cultivation of plants, introducing very many new
ones, they likewise paid great attention to the
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