Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society

"In presenting this report I will not attempt to give any historical data connected with the subject of surgery, since that has been ably done in the report of last year. I shall assume, and that without hesitation, that surgery is a science, properly so-called. That it is an art, is also true. But what is science? What is art? Science is knowledge. Art the application of that knowledge. To be more explicit, science is the knowledge we possess of nature and her laws; or, more properly speaking, God and His laws."