Page:The Hunterian Oration 1877.djvu/70

62 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. And indeed, if a man has not such a degree of enthusiasm and love of the art as will make him impatient of unreasonable opposition, and of encroachments upon his discoveries and his reputation, he will hardly become considerable in anatomy or any other branch of natural knowledge. 91

William Hunter acted on these principles all his life. John did not; and on many occasions must have exercised great self- restraint. His treatise on the Venereal Disease was, by several writers, vehemently attacked, 3 but I think he left them all unanswered.

One cannot doubt that Hunter was a very good-hearted man, but, whether for want of time or want of care, he did not make friends. He was uncouth, vehement, unready to conform to the customs of his profession, and in this sense at least un- sociable, and therefore unpopular. Still, it cannot fairly be said (as it commonly is of great men) that during his lifetime he was ill-used or regarded with dislike or disrespect.

It is easy to find opposition of statements concerning him. Jenner, in the grand style which he sometimes assumed, says : 3 the arrows of malignancy. The name of John Hunter stamps this observation with the signature of truth.' But others tell that, at least in the later years of his life, he was accounted the first among anatomists and surgeons.
 * And as for flame, wliat is it ? a gilded butt for ever pierced with

Doubtless, the greatness of Hunter's work was not clearly discerned by his contemporaries. Much of it was too far above the level of knowledge at the time, and he went far in the study of subjects which others had hardly begun to think of. Still it cannot, with any justice, be said that he was distrusted or made light of.

Among the public, I believe that he was regarded by many as a very strange man, and his love of collecting was thought a useless eccentricity. There were not a few of his habits which may explain these thoughts of him. Most people would even

1 Quoted in Simmons's Life, p. 25.

9 By Clutterbuck, Duncan, Gordon, and others, in pamphlets published at the time.

9 In the Life, by Dr. Baron, vol. i. p. 155.