Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons ... February 14, 1817 (IA b22009358).pdf/34

26 in this profession, should first have received a good classical education. Almost the whole of the professional knowledge that he could obtain from reading, was originally derived from the Greeks—the names of the different parts of the bedy—of the various diseases to which man is liable, and of the remedies employed for their cure-——together with the terms of art, were given in the expressive language of that wonderful people.

Although, during :part of the seventeenth century, and down to the period now noticed, the energy and freedom of the human mind had displayed a noble activity as contrasted with its preceding long continued torpor and subjection; yet the practice of Surgery had received very little improvement. It is true that since the times of the �