Page:The Hunterian Oration 1839.djvu/27

20 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. this subject, first disputing with the physicians the monopoly they had assumed of practising anatomy, by the decree that no person should be so employed but by permission, and in the presence of one of their faculty. But the surgeons persevered; they acquired anatomical knowledge, and desired to impart it to their pupils; and in imitation, they said, of the Romans, who, by the magnificence of their buildings, shed a lustre upon, and perpetuated the memory of, their noble deeds, so did they strive to advance the glory and the utility of their art, by the erection of an amphitheatre for instruction, an edifice, they added, that should be declaratory of the splendour of surgery in their time. ‘Their efforts did not here cease. Our art, they urged, is the fruit of experience, an experience consisting in the accumulation and comparison of facts. To prevent these facts being scattered and lost, to bring them into a position advantageous for examination and comparison, to preserve them for the use of posterity, were the considerations that determined the formation of the Academy, whose me- moirs still continue to be one of our most valuable records of surgical experience. The name of De La Peyronie deserves especial mention, as the individual who took the prominent part in these arrangements, and who devoted the wealth he had acquired through the practice of surgery to the endowment of theatres and professorships for instruction in its principles. �