Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons on the 14th of February, 1834 (IA b31879792).pdf/12

8 of skill; and it exists wherever medicine is cultivated as a science. Although altogether arbitrary, and dependent on usage, it is in many respects convenient and advantageous. There is no doubt that a person who has studied medicine generally may improve a particular department, if he should be wholly occupied with it; we must not, however, lose sight of the truth, that the scientific principles are common to the two branches of the profession; that the practical proceedings are nearly alike; and that the mode of study is the same. I feel convinced that no branch of the profession, how. ever limited, can be thoroughly understood, except by him who has studied the structure and functions of the body generally, and then cast his view over the whole field of disease; and, consequently, that the scientific character of surgery will be lowered, unless its practical ministrations rest on the broad and secure foundation laid by MR. HUNTER in anatomy, physiology, general pathology, and therapeutics.

Thus we find, at last, that the difference between physic and surgery is a distinction not in science but in practice. Since it depends on differences of taste, or on circumstances of convenience, age, or situation, as regards the practitioner, and on opinion, confidence or caprice, in the public, it cannot be strictly defined. Nor is it necessary for us to take the trouble of settling the boundary accurately between the two departments considered