Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons on the 14th of February, 1834 (IA b31879792).pdf/11

 words. The basis of nearly all parts consists of the cellular, vascular, absorbent, and nervous struc tures; and the phenomena of life are alike in all their leading features. Hence the changes of structure and the derangements of function which constitute disease, must be fundamentally similar, differing only in modification. Since, then, the component tissues of our frame are the same throughout, and since the various organs are closely linked together in the execution of a com- mon purpose, the nature of disease and of treat- ment is every where essentially the same. Thus the principles of pathology are general; they are the same for all parts of the body, and must, therefore, be common to the physician and the surgeon.

Although medicine, as thus explained, is one subject, and although all its parts are connected by numerous and intimate relations, the field which it embraces is too extensive for one person to cultivate the whole; and it has been found convenient, for practical purposes, to subdivide the art into distinct branches. Hence have arisen the separate callings of the physician, surgeon, accoucheur, &c. The distinction of physic and surgery has thus taken place naturally in the progress of society, like other subdivisions of labour: it accords with the notion commonly entertained, and in some respects well founded, that the confinement of atten- tion and exertion to one object produces increase