Page:The Hunterian Oration 1839.djvu/31

24 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. thigh, performed by Mr. Hunter. To each of these, individuals, above forty years of life, with integrity of limb, was given by this splendid achievement of surgery. A becoming tribute to the fame of the military hero is the erection of a column covered by the inscriptions of his victories. A splendid monument it would be to the genius of Hunter, whereon would be inscribed a record of the amount of human life preserved by this single result of his labours. Nor can we forget the disinterested spirit, and the simplicity which marked his amouncement of the new operation. Too much engaged, says his biographer, to take this task upon him- self, he requested of Sir Everard Home to do it, who accordingly published his well-known paper on the subject. When, moreover, the consequences of this discovery of the principle of treating aneurism are contemplated in their relation to the knowledge subsequently obtained of Nature’s processes in every variety of circumstance concurring to the stoppage of bleeding from a wounded artery, we may affirm of what has been done for the single subject of the diseases and wounds of blood vessels, by Hunter and his successors, that, never have the ministrations of science and art been more successfully directed to the relief of human suffering.

The excellence of the practice of Perceval Pott consisted, it is well known, in the substitution of refined and skilful manipulations for the coarse and less dex- �