Page:The Hunterian oration, for the year 1819.djvu/34

30 less, each most competent to decide upon the best means for effecting the latter purpose in that to which he had been educated, and his attention chiefly directed. Medicine is one and indivisible: it must be learned as a whole, for no part can be understood, if studied separately. The physician must understand surgery, and the surgeon the medical treatment of diseases. Indeed, it is from the evidence afforded by external diseases, that we are enabled to judge of the nature and progress of those that are internal; which appeared so clearly to Boerhaave, that though his object was to teach his pupils the practice of medicine, he began by teaching them surgery.

Yet as medical science is so very extensive, and such accurate knowledge of its various subjects is required, the division of it into two principal departments, which custom has established, may be continued with great propriety and advantage. So much knowledge and talent is requiste in the division of surgery, for the correct re-adjustment of parts which have been severed and separ-