Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons ... February 14, 1817 (IA b22009358).pdf/16

8 mation which they contain--and by surgeons, who proudly claim him as a brother, for the numerous and excellent observations on the subjects of contusions, luxations, fractures, abscesses, fistulae, hernia, and especially of wounds and diseases of the head. His remarks are of inestimable value, inasmuch as they bear undoubted proof of the simplicity, honour, and truth of the narrator. Many of his conclusions may be questioned and overthrown; but no man has ever been so bold as to arraign the fidelity with which he has related what he saw, or believed.

Hitherto Surgery was only studied empirically, that is, by the accumulation of such facts as presented themselves to the external senses, and by experience. The anatomy of the human body was very imperfectly known ; �