February 23, 1905] 



NA TURE 



403 



strata of the atmosphere at various distances remote from 

 the surface, may be expected to throw some additional light 

 upon the constitution of the gaseous envelope through which 

 the light passes, and, moreover, there is the troublesome 

 and disturbing question of selective absorption, the import- 

 ance of which the author fully admits, but does not consider 

 numerically in his work, which may play a very important 

 part in the future theory of atmospheric extinction. But 

 any improvement which may hereafter be made will not 

 invalidate the calculations, so far as they refer to the mass 

 of the air through which the light beam penetrates. 



Dr. Bemporod divides his work into five sections. In the 

 first he presents the problem in its most general form, and 

 defines the function F(s), the so-called path of the ray in 

 the atmosphere. Chapter ii. exhibits a critical examination 

 of the theories of Bouguer, Lambert, Laplace, and of some 

 others less well known. In the next the author discusses 

 the hypotheses of Ivory and Schmidt on the constitution 

 of the atmosphere. Of the two, Schmidt's hypothesis of a 

 uniform decrease of the temperature with the height above 

 the surface gives the best agreement with the observed 

 temperatures derived by Assmann and Berson from balloon 

 ascents. The latter hypothesis is the one therefore selected 

 for development, but both Ivory and Schmidt give prac- 

 tically the same values for extinction, while Laplace's theory 

 at the zenith distance of Sy" appears to be a tenth of a 

 magnitude in error. Chapter iv. explains the formation 

 of the extensive numerical tables that accompany the work, 

 and in the last the author has some remarks on the in- 

 fluence of geographical position on the absorption, as well 

 as of the effects of oscillations in temperature and pressure. 

 The whole forms a valuable addition to a subject of great 

 interest and importance. 



]OH^ HUNTER AND HIS INFLUENCE ON 

 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.' 



A S the history of philosophy, considered from one point 

 ■^ of view, is the record of the development and growth 

 of ideas and of the formation of beliefs and doctrines re- 

 specting man and the universe accomplished through the 

 thinking of a few great minds, so the history of medicine 

 is a record of the observations, thoughts, and achievements 

 of a few great personalilies — Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, 

 Par^, Harvey, and John Hunter, to name only the greatest. 

 John Hunter is the theme which has been assigned to me. 



Throughout the ages of civilisation the growth of know- 

 ledge has been slow and often irregular, but it has been 

 continuous and it has been sure. How slow and yet how 

 sure we may realise by comparing the dialectic notions of 

 Aristotle respecting weight and motion with the direct 

 appeals to the evidences of the senses afforded by the 

 demonstrations of Galilei, whereby it was shown that, so 

 far from there being in nature bodies possessing positive 

 levity, all matter is equally affected by gravity, irrespective 

 of its form, magnitude, or texture. By the simple experi- 

 ment of dropping objects from the Tower of Pisa, Galilei, 

 who began life as a medical student, laid the foundation 

 of modern physical science, and especially of dynamics. 

 This expedient was one of the first appeals, at least in 

 modern times, to the use of direct experiment in physical 

 science, and the truth thereby established became a deter- 

 mining factor in Newton's great discovery of the law of 

 gravitation. From Aristotle to Galilei an interval of more 

 than eighteen centuries had elapsed. Galilei and Harvey 

 were contemporaries. 



John Hunter was born exactly a century after the publi- 

 cation of Harvey's " Exercitatio De Motu Cordis." It is 

 one hundred and eleven years since John Hunter died. Yet 

 how modern Hunter is ! Inventions and discoveries now 

 crowd upon us so thick and fast that we are apt to forget 

 how recently modern physical science began, and especially 

 modern medicine. In the order of time medicine, in its 

 rudest and simplest forms, must have been one of the first 

 of the empirical arts, but in the order of ideas it was one 

 of the last to enter into the hierarchy of the sciences. As 

 a system of organised knowledge medicine presupposes and 



I Abridged from the Hunterian oration. Helivered before the Roval 

 College of Surgeons, February 14, by Mr. John Tweedy, president of the 



NO. 1843, VOL. 71] 



requires not only centuries of clinical observation and 

 a complete logical apparatus, but it also requires an 

 advanced state of all the other natural sciences. It con- 

 cerns itself with the recondite problems of life in the most 

 complex and the most highly differentiated of its manifest- 

 ations, whether under the conditions of health or under 

 those of disease. Until physics and chemistry had advanced 

 from the conjectural and the aprioristic to the scientific 

 stage, medicine could only be conjectural and aprioristic 

 too, however useful it may have been as a practical art. 

 The thoughts and labours, the experiments and discoveries 

 of the great pioneers of modern knowledge in the physical 

 sciences were the necessary prelude to a scientific progress 

 in biology, which, in its turn, was a condition precedent 

 to any real advance in the science of medicine, surgery, 

 and pathology. Harvey, in the order of time and of 

 thought, was the necessary antecedent of Hunter. 



The starting-point of John Hunter's career as anatomist, 

 biologist, and surgeon was in the year 1748, when he came 

 to London with a receptive and intelligent mind, a quick 

 and observant eye, and a well-trained hand, to collaborate 

 with his brother William in the anatomical school which 

 had been started two or three years before. 



Considering the important "part that human anatomy now 

 plays in medical education, it is difficult to conceive that 

 there was no systematic teaching of anatomy in England 

 before the middle of the eighteenth century. During the 

 many centuries which elapsed between, say, the time of 

 Hippocrates and the middle of the sixteenth century, the 

 dissection of the human cadaver was almost unknown. 

 Forbidden alike by the laws and customs and religion of 

 the ancient Greeks, and by the creed of Mohammed, the 

 study of human anatomy was placed under a civil and 

 religious ban until the end of the thirteenth century. In 

 ancient Greece the laws relating to immediate burial were 

 very stringent. Even victorious generals had been con- 

 demned to death because they neglected to bury the slain. 

 The pathos of Sophocles' tragedy of " Antigone " turns, 

 it will be remembered, upon the sacredness of the dead, 

 and of the necessity, higlier than imperial commands, of 

 immediate burial. 



When the tradition of Greek medicine passed — in the 

 seventh and eighth centuries — into the hands of the 

 Mohammedans, human anatomy was equally neglected, the 

 practice of dissection being implicitly forbidden by the 

 Quran. Even after the dissection of the human cadaver 

 received the sanction of the civil authorities in southern 

 Europe, the teaching of anatomy was cursory and 

 occasional, and merely descriptive. Mundino of Bologna, 

 in the fourteenth century, who was the first in modern 

 times to dissect the human cadaver, seems to have dis- 

 sected only two bodies. So little was known of human 

 anatomy, and so strong was the tyranny of tradition, that 

 when Vesalius, in the middle of the sixteenth century, 

 alleged that the anatomical descriptions of Galen could not 

 be adapted to man, there were not a few who, in their zeal 

 to repel the accusation that Galen had used animals in 

 dissection, did not hesitate to maintain that the human 

 organisation had changed since Galen's time. 



In England, notwithstanding Harvey lectures on anatomy 

 in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, there was no 

 organised teaching of anatoiny before William Hunter's 

 time. In this matter William Hunter has not received all 

 the credit he deserves. Had his ambition been realised, he 

 would, nearly a century and a half ago, have solved a 

 problem in early medical education in London which is 

 still perplexing the minds of many thoughtful persons. He 

 desired to establish an anatomical school in London upon 

 an extensive scale. With this object in view, he offered to 

 erect a building at the cost of 7000Z. for the studv and 

 teaching of anatomy provided the Government would grant 

 him a piece of ground to build upon. It was also his in- 

 tention to give to this institution all his preparations and 

 his books. With a lamentable lack of svmpathv which 

 British Governments have too often manifested in their 

 dealings with science and education, William Hunter's 

 offer was declined. Smarting under a Ivcen sense of dis- 

 appointment and full of resentment, he determined to 

 transfer his favours to Glasgow, which now enjoys the 

 possession of his priceless museum and his library. Beati 

 f^ossidciites. 



