Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons on the 14th of February, 1834 (IA b31879792).pdf/8

 as an operator; he would have disdained the false and ephemeral reputation which could be built on bold and bloody undertakings of this kind.

Although practising surgery, Mr. HUNTER Would not have thought it possible to separate the study and investigation of internal and external diseases. He knew that the exterior and interior of our frame obey the same pathological laws, and that they are bound together by mutual influences so numerous and powerful, that we cannot stir a step in the investigation of either without reference to the other. Neither would he have admitted that the several parts of the human body can be so insulated in their sufferings and treatment, as to allow the establishment of a class of local diseases as the special department of the surgeon.

In order to estimate rightly the distinction be- tween physic and surgery, we must advert shortly to the nature of the medical profession generally.

To preserve health, to remedy injury, to cure or alleviate disease, and to apply the information we possess on these subjects to the elucidation of various questions in legislation, jurisprudence, cri- minal proceedings, police, and in other matters affecting the health of individuals and societies, are the objects of a comprehensive science, which may he designated by the name of medicine. Considered thus generally, it embraces the natural history of man; it investigates the formation of the human body and its living actions; it observes the human