Page:The Hunterian oration, for the year 1819.djvu/33

Rh Mr. Hunter was the first who deduced the opinion, as a legitimate consequence of legitimate facts, that life actually constructed the very means by which it carried on its various processes, and that it could operate in semifluid and even fluid substances. His intelligent mind further perceived that no system of physiology could be perfect that did not equally explain the morbid as well as the healthy actions of life. I may say, that he discovered a vital principle in physiology active in producing correct pathology. Therefore, he appears to me as a new character in our profession; and briefly to express his peculiar merit, I may call him the first and great physionosologist or expositor of the nature of disease.

Haller was a physician, Hunter a surgeon. both were anatomists and physiologists, both therefore equally qualified, as far as their knowledge of the animal economy extended, to discern the nature and mode of cure of the diseases in either department of medical science; yet, doubt-