Excerpt from Surgical Handicraft: A Manual of Surgical Manipulations, Minor Surgery, and Other Matters Connected With the Work of House Surgeons and Surgical Dressers This main idea I have wished to express in the title I have chosen, and it has been very far from my desire to write in any sense an elementary work on theoretical surgery. Still I am conscious of having been forced in some places to treat of abstract surgical questions, and to sacrifice absolute consistency if by so doing I could better explain necessary manipulations.