In performing these things with the hands, we cannot but cause pain. Who can cut off a leg, tear apart the bladder, restore dislocated bones, open ulcers, bind wounds, or apply cauteries without causing pain? But unless we do it, the patients will either die or lead the remnant of their lives in perpetual misery. Who can accuse a surgeon of cruelty? Who could want surgeons to be punished the same way the ancient surgeon Archagatus of Rome was? He was a good surgeon, but because his methods were painful, the people dragged him from his house into the Campus Martius and there stoned him to death, according to Sextus Cheroneus of Plutarche’s niece. It was truly an inhumane ingratitude to cruelly murder a man intent on doing such a necessary job. The Senate disapproved of what the people did to him, so they made a statue of him in gold and placed it in Aesculapius, dedicated to his perpetual memory. 

I like what Celsus said: a surgeon must have a strong, stable, and intrepid hand, and a mind resolute and merciless, so that to heal him he takes in hand, he be not moved to make more haste than the thing requires; nor to cut less than is needed; but which does all things as if he were nothing affected with their cries; not giving heed to the judgment of the vain common people, who speak ill of surgeons because of their ignorance.