Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons ... February 14, 1817 (IA b22009358).pdf/37

29 opportunities of exercising his talents. The other hospitals of London had also the assistance of very able surgeons, who contributed not a little to the establishment of the character of the metropolis as being an excellent school of Surgery. Young men, no longer finding it necessary to go to a foreign country im search of that knowledge which was to be obtamed at home, resorted to London from all parts of the country; and every succeeding year in greater numbers, in proportion to the increasing celebrity of its schools. This memorable period must ever be thought of with delight. The human mind having been kept, during many centuries, in a state of the most dark and abject thraldom, through the means of violence, craft, and bigotry, at length burst its degrading bonds; and a �