Page:The Hunterian Oration 1839.djvu/21

14 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. skeleton of surpassing excellence.—So little encouragement did the cultivation of anatomy receive through many ages that, not until the sixteenth century, in other countries than Italy, was human dissection permitted, and then so reluctantly that, to a very late period, it continued to be a practice entered upon at the risk of the personal safety of the individual. At Paris in the year 1727, did Haller meet with the interruption to his anatomical studies of which he so indignantly complains in his Bibliotheca Anatomica.* “Sed etiam hane discendi opportunitatem, maligna curiositas operarii turbayit, qui effoso pariete, quid agerem speculatus, meum nomen ad viros publica securitati preefectos de- tulit. Ut graves poenas, ipsas forte triremes, effuge- rem, latendum mihi fuit, et deserenda cadavera.”’— Even in our enlightened country, the science which had the best right to expect the aspirations and the efforts of the wise and the good, has received but the one re- cently granted public protection and encouragement ; for it is certain that the legal enactment, which con- signed to the anatomist the body of the murderer, had not for its object the advance of science, “but the addi-


 * Tom. xi. page 196.

+ An Act for regulating Schools of Anatomy, 1832.

To Henry Warzurton, Esq., M. P., F.R.S., the Public are mainly indebted for this important measure. The extent of the obligation is known only to those who witnessed his Exertions in the cause of Science and of Humanity. �