Explore "The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci" by Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
At that moment Gian Galeazzo was being bled: according to the rules of surgery the operation was performed by candle-light, and with closed shutters. The surgeon, or rather the barber, a timid old man, was opening the vein, and his assistant held the brass basin; the physician, a man of grave and impenetrable countenance, wearing spectacles and a hood of dark purple velvet and squirrel's fur, merely watched, for to handle surgical instruments was derogatory to the dignity of a Doctor of Medicine.
'Before night he shall be bled again,' said the great man when the arm had been bandaged and the duke was restored to his pillows.