Page:The Hunterian Oration 1832.djvu/29

25 extensive havoc of quackery, and to discourage the study of anatomy—the principal foundation of every thing that is good, safe, and useful in the practice, both of medicine and surgery—I can hardly bring myself to believe, that such things could have happened in a country, proudly exalted amongst nations by its love of science,—its attachment to truth,—and its contempt of mercenary ignorance. The laws, which give rise to circumstances, leading to the robbery of graves, and even to the murder of the living for the sale of their bodies, must be bad indeed; but the laws, which would totally interdict the study of anatomy, and leave the whole community a prey to those all-devouring monsters, Disease and Quackery, must be infinitely worse.

Thanks, however, to the usefulness of free discussion—thanks to the wisdom of some of our legislators—and thanks even to others, who have exposed their weaknesses upon this particular subject, (for, thus the cause has been materially served,) —the present discouraged state of anatomy promises soon to