Book Description

Excerpt from A Practical Treatise on Military Surgery Being a Discourse delivered by the Author at the Opening of a Course of Lee tures on Military Surgery, at Bellevue Medical College, New York, April, 1861. Gentlemen - War is the normal condition of mankind; pe.ace is the abnormal condition. This statement is not flattering to a people claiming Christianity and boasting of its civilization it is nevertheless true, and the fact must be accepted. History is little else than a record Of the contentions, conflicts, and conquests of nations. The sword and the cross, conventional emblems of battle-fields, stand as thick upon the round surface Of the terrestrial sphere as stars upon the surface Of the celestial. Each year, and almost every month in the year, commemorates some new achievement of arms, and places a new symbol upon the map; SO that now, in the middle of the nineteenth cen tury, as when Isaiah wrote, it is only in prophetic Vision that we see the approach of that happy day when swords Shall be beaten into ploughshares and Spears into pruning hooks, and nations Shall not learn war any more. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.