Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons ... February 14, 1817 (IA b22009358).pdf/11

3 respectively governed. Those men, in certain ages and countries, would have been doomed to an ignominious death, who in others obtained the highest honours; and to whom the gratitude of their contemporaries, according to their theological notions, decreed the honour of deification.

Of the various objects of study, to the cultivation of which man is led by taste or genius, there is not any of greater importance than that of the Healing Art, the successful professors of which were, accordingly, im all ages, at least where freedom and science prevailed, held in the highest estimation; for the man who has the power to assuage pain, to remove disease, and to save life, is possessed of that which the most powerful monarchs would gladly purchase if their domi-