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"The art and love of the surgeon may, Pygmalion-like, make his work so exquisite and perfect that the great Jehovah will touch it into life, even as Venus made the marble Galatea into vibrant, palpitating life. The surgeon must, with fingers that are dexterous beyond compare and with mind that plans, see the completed result in his imagination. He models and commands the method, carries out the procedure, puts the parts into perfect apposition, but God knits the scar. "He sews severed arteries that they may carry their crimson torrent without leak and without hindrance. The delicate nerve must be spliced to give the return of welcome sensation to palsied arm. He sews the viscera so truly that they become watertight. He mends the splintered bone and repairs the lacerated flesh while holding to the skirts of the frightened spirit, lest it should flee in flight. "When a surgical operation is described as beautiful, it seems incongruous and uncanny to the layman. To one who can appreciate its beauties it is really the acme of artistic perfection. A resection of the stomach by a master like Mayo, widely excising the diseased part, restoring continuity and function, all so deftly, and beautiful in its beneficent invasion and conquest, is a magnificent epitome of the surgical art. " 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' but only the surgeon knows how uneasy lies the head that wields the knife. It requires such intrepidity, such clairvoyance. Cutting must be done with such consummate skill that no unnecessary or vital structure be injured. The layman thinks of an operation as purely a wielding of the knife. The surgeon actually does much more in hemostasis, in clean removal of pathological conditions, in the restoration of normal relations, in the sewing of tissues, and the closure of wounds. This is itself an exquisite piece of craftsmanship, even to the tying of the last stitch." With the foregoing apostrophe to Surgery, which he has served for 40 years. Professor William David Haggard of Vanderbilt University last week in Chicago assumed the presidency of the American College of Surgeons. The Fellows of the College settled down to a hard week's round of lectures, conferences, clinics and surmises, which President Haggard's further rhapsody on Women lightened. Cried Dr. Haggard, who has lived in Nashville, Tenn. most of his 61 years:* "The Apollo Belvedere,'with its magnificent forehead calm as Heaven, rises above eyes that follow the shaft he has sped. 'And the cold marble leaped to life a god.' Contrast the Belvedere with the Venus de Milo, the very eidolon of the female form, the Queen of the Loves; the head too small for great intellect but big enough for the greatest love. . . . "Surgery has created its greatest endeavors for woman—the Caesarean section for her unbornable child. McDowell invoked the bold invasion of the abdominal cavity for the removal of the great new growths that made for women untimely graves. This presaged all of the marvelous surgery of the peritoneal interior. It is vision commanded by courage that sails into the domain of curative surgery. The art and genius of J. Marion Sims with the silver-wire suture made lacerated woman whole. The victim of vesicovaginal fistula was no longer a prisoner in her own house. She is rescued from her wretchedness by the most deli cate skill and the gentlest