HUNTERIAN ORATION. 175 



" He had before the time of Cuvier and Meckel, col- 

 lected materials for a work which needed but the fin- 

 ishing touches to have made it one of the greatest, 

 most durable, and valuable contributions ever made 

 by one man to the advancement of the science of com- 

 parative anatomy." 



Hunter's surgical teachings contain so much that 

 is fundamental and authoritative that no teacher of 

 surgery in any medical college of Europe or America 

 fails to inform his class in the course of his instruction, 

 that such and such an idea originated with Hunter. 

 Sometimes, to be sure, with the remark on the part of 

 the egotistical " professor," that he has improved upon 

 the great author. Hunter was the first to demonstrate 

 that aneurism could be cured by tying the artery on 

 the cardiac side of the disease. Other plans of cure 

 have been devised, but none which has wholly super- 

 seded the Hunterian method. Great improvements 

 had been made upon the surgery of mediaeval times, 

 yet Hunter found it " an empirical handicraft, and 

 raised it to a scientific art." He introduced so many 

 rational ideas into surgical practice that he fairly 

 earned the right to be crowned " the father of modern 

 surgery." 



One of the grand mistakes committed on the part 

 of those who would imitate the career of Hunter, has 

 consisted chiefly in a misapprehension of the character 

 of the man copied after. It is a blunder to suppose that 

 Hunter won renown by simply making a great collec- 

 tion of anatomical rubbish, and by getting together a 

 heap of facts and fossils. Any body can make obser- 

 vations in physiology and pathology, but how few 

 possess Hunter's philosophical method of investiga- 

 tion, or the mental scope to classify fossils and facts 



