Page:The Hunterian Oration 1839.djvu/18

THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. il be expected, given rise to the epochs of advance in anatomy and surgery. At one period they have been connected with the prosperity of a nation; and at another, with its political and religious dissensions. So it has been with other departments of knowledge ; thus the origin of our Royal Society has been traced to the retreat “of a few friends to Truth, Repose, and Nature,’ who betook themselves to the investigations of natural science as the means of relief from the troubles of the times, by which they were grievously oppressed. And at another period, the excitement of war, when its object was the preservation of freedom, by calling forth the energies of mind, has been favourable to the cultivation of natural knowledge, of the arts and sciences generally ; thus, in the Italian States, the first half of the sixteenth century was a period alike remarkable for the fury of its contests, as for the number of its illustrious men in science and literature, and it was the period most fruitful of discoveries in human anatomy; when its most rapid strides were made, from the combined efforts of the many distinguished men then flourishing, some of whom were foreigners, whom the Italian princes had invited to their country. At the head of this illustrious band was Andrew Vesalius; “that great genius,” says the learned Sprengel, “ whose name can never be pronounced by the admirer of anatomical science without a feeling of deep veneration.” Vesalius commenced �