Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons ... 1849 (IA b3188362x).pdf/10

6 stant reference to every part of anatomy and physiology, so conspicuous in Hunter, for that depth of thought and varied illustration which fix the attention and necessitate the exercise of the mind of the reader, in dwelling on the doubts and suspicions,—the halfformed theories and hypotheses,—so thickly scattered through his writings;—many of which have been proved by further investigation, with increased collateral knowledge, to have been most sagacious anticipations of important facts.

Leaving to others the application of details, Hunters constant aim, as he informs his pupils, was “ to explain to them the principles of the art” of surgery and thus, by reasoning, and comparison, and analogy, to render them fit to cope with unusual and unforeseen difficulties ;—it was by enforcing these guiding principles, in a spirit of experimental research, that he contributed to effect a great and permanent change in surgery, pathological and practical, no less influential than that which he produced in physiology;—a change which is still felt unconsciously by every one who enters our profession, because silently actuating most of his immediate instructors.

Hunter himself complained, “ Since I have lectured I have scarcely found a pamphlet without some of my opinions, and often my very language :”f and it is in fact the truth. Some of his immediate successors, thoroughly imbued with his spirit, successfully cultivated the science of surgery, and they have been the teachers of their profession ; to Hunter’s influence on


 * Works, yoI. i. 208.

f lb. p. 210.