Page:The Hunterian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons in London, on the fourteenth day of February, 1821 (electronic resource) (IA b21483851).pdf/20

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in order to preserve the life of the patient.

Greece long continued to possess the principal ‘schools of medical and -chirur- gical knowledge, as well as of philoso- phy and eloquence; nor did she entirely lose this advantage, till after the grow- ing pride and power of her ambitious and overbearing rival, had finally’ sub- dued this princess. among the nations, and reduced her: to the humiliated condition of a’ Roman province.

Prior to that epoch, Ptolemy Soter had founded the school: and library at Alexandria, and had allowed and en- couraged the dissection of human bodies: Erasistratus and Herophilus made many discoveries in anatomy, and thus con- �