Page:The Hunterian Oration 1839.djvu/13

6 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. my immediate predecessor, curiosity has been abundantly satisfied; it can now be permitted only to reflect on the influence which his labours have had in advancing surgery to its present elevated position. If the present period be rightly entitled an epoch in medicine, it must be interesting to consider the circumstances which preceded it: as the most useful part of history is the knowledge of what passed before, and after every great event, so do the labours of John Hunter in the cause of medical science, from their remarkable extent and influence, continue to be, even on the twenty-fourth anniversary, the fit subject of our attention. It was a becoming spirit which suggested this commemoration, for as our brethren the physicians pay a just tribute of respect to the memory of Harvey, whose discovery of the circulation is the greatest single advance ever made in physiology, we in like manner dignify the memory of Hunter, whose discoveries and philosophic views of the actions of living bodies in health and disease, have accomplished more than the efforts of any other single mind for the advance of medicine and surgery.

An interest in the object of our meeting is acknowledged beyond the sphere of our profession ; it brings. to our theatre the honoured in other sciences, the dignitaries in Church and State; it places the College at the bar of a public tribunal where evidence is to be offered of the right appropriation of the scientific trea- �