Page:The Hunterian Oration,1838.djvu/12

4 of prosecuting anatomy, human dissection was forbidden. In the interval, under the enlightened sway of the Ptolemies, the first rude dissections of the human subject had been made by and, the founders of the once celebrated school of Alexandria. But the feeble and delusive light which dawned upon anatomy in the Greek and Roman era was chiefly obtained from dissection of the bodies of animals, living and dead, and of such occasional exhibitions of the human organization as war, famine, and casualty contributed to present.

Yet it is not to these circumstances only, unfavourable as they appear to the progress of anatomical knowledge, that the long prevailing darkness is justly to be ascribed; for it may be remarked, although the anatomy of animals furnishes a very various and imperfect type of the human structure, that the most important physiological facts which later and happier times have established have been derived from this source. It is rather attributable to the rare appearance, in the course of ages, of men instinctively impelled by the ardent desire of investigating nature in this interesting department of her works, and at the same time capable of conceiving and exemplifying the power which knowledge and a right use of the reasoning faculties confer; unenlightened as was their epoch by an insight into the method, the uses, and the motive of a sound philosophy. But had the consum-