In Dr. Adams’ _Life of Hippocrates_,[395] he says: “In surgery he was a bold operator. He fearlessly, and as we would now think, in some cases unnecessarily, perforated the skull with the trepan and the trephine in injuries of the head. He opened the chest also in empyema and hydrothorax. His extensive practice, and no doubt his great familiarity with the accidents occurring at the public games of his country, must have furnished him with ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with dislocations and fractures of all kinds; and how well he had profited by the opportunities which he thus enjoyed, every page of his treatises _On Fractures_ and _On the Articulations_ abundantly testifies. In fact, until within a very recent period, the modern plan of treatment in such cases was not at all to be compared with his skilful mode of adjusting fractured bones, and of securing them with waxed bandages. In particular, his description of the accidents which occur at the elbow and hip-joints will be allowed, even at the present day, to display a most wonderful acquaintance with the subject. In the treatment of dislocations, when human strength was not sufficient to restore the displacement, he skilfully availed himself of all the mechanical powers which were then known. In his views with regard to the nature of club-foot, it might have been affirmed of him a few years ago that he was twenty-four centuries in advance of his profession, when he stated that in this case there is no dislocation, but merely a declination of the foot; and that in infancy, by means of methodical bandaging, a cure may in most cases be effected without any surgical operation. In a word, until the days of Delpech and Stromeyer, no one entertained ideas so sound and scientific on the nature of this deformity as Hippocrates.”
Dr. Adams, recapitulating the general results of the investigations as to the genuineness of the Hippocratic books, states that a considerable portion of them are not the work of Hippocrates himself. The works almost universally admitted to be genuine are: _The Prognostics_, _On Airs_, etc., _On Regimen in Acute Diseases_, seven of the books of _Aphorisms_, _Epidemics_, I. and III., _On the Articulations_, _On Fractures_, _On the Instruments of Reduction_, _The Oath_.