Page:The Hunterian Oration 1832.djvu/31

27 painting obtained from princes and governments, in the fifteenth century, what the love of health and life—what common sense—ought to have procured, in the earliest ages of civilized society.

,—This is an occasion on which we meet, not to speak of John Hunter alone, but rather to consider him in association with other distinguished men, to whom medical science is deeply indebted. In our sincere and warm admiration of him, let us not entirely forget the useful labours of others, whose talents and exertions had vast influence in bringing anatomy and surgery to the degree of improvement, which these sciences had reached at the commencement of his splendid career. Among-st these meritorious characters stands first the memorable Vesalius, born at Brussels in the year 1514, and generally regarded as the founder of modern anatomy, whose labours in this department of knowledge were carried on with such rapidity and success, that, in the words of Senac, he discovered quite a new world before he was twenty-eight