254 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 294. 



museum as Hunter left it contained 13,682 

 preparations arranged in two divisions — 

 normal structures and abnormal structures ; 

 now the number of preparations has been 

 doubled, though the museum is still only an 

 expansion of Hunter's. Over and over 

 again— notably in 1835, 1847, and 1888— 

 the college has added new buildings to ac- 

 commodate the ever-increasing collections, 

 and in the successive conservators it has 

 appointed — W. Clift, Richard Owen, J. T. 

 Quekett, William Flower and Charles Stew- 

 art — it has had the good fortune to find 

 men of the highest scientific attainments 

 who have watched over them with unceas- 

 ing care. To the first of these, admirers of 

 Hunter are specially indebted, for he was 

 the means of preserving a great part of 

 Hunter's anatomical writings. Originally 

 included with the collections, they were 

 borrowed by Sir E. Home, Hunter's execu- 

 tor, who used them for the manufacture of 

 papers and lectures, to which he attached 

 his own name, and then burnt them so as to 

 remove the evidence of his dishonorable 

 conduct. Clift, however, had made copious 

 extracts from the MSS., and in this way an 

 authentic record of about half their sub- 

 stance has been preserved. The college 

 possesses many memorials of Hunter, in- 

 cluding a very fine portrait of him by Sir 

 Joshua Reynolds, his consulting chair, 

 clock, pocket- scales, lancet-case, etc. His 

 ' name and fame ' are celebrated by a bien- 

 nial ' Hunterian Oration, ' while numerous 

 Hunterian lectures are delivered in ac- 

 cordance with the conditions on which the 

 collections were entrusted to the college. 

 Another service rendered to the cause of 

 surgical knowledge by the college is to be 

 found in the splendid library it has formed 

 and maintains. This originated in a small 

 grant of £50 made at the very beginning of 

 this century; it now contains 50,000 vol- 

 umes, including journals and transactions 

 of scientific societies. Finally, reference 



must be made to the college's important 

 share in examining and licensing physicians 

 and surgeons to practice. This portion of 

 its functions is carried on jointly with the 

 Eoyal College of Physicians — a return to an 

 arrangement 400 years old — the examina- 

 tions being mostly held in the examination 

 hall built on the Thames Embankment in 

 1886, at the joint expense of the two bodies. 

 Here not only is medical knowledge tested 

 but its sum increased, for the hall includes 

 extensive laboratories for original research, 

 where materials are supplied at the expense 

 of the colleges to any of their Fellows or 

 members who obtain permission to work in 

 them. In addition anti-toxic serum is pre- 

 pared for the hospitals of the Metropolitan 

 Asylums Board and for various general and 

 children's hospitals, the cost of the latter 

 supply being defrayed by a grant from the 

 Goldsmiths' Company. 



TEE DEVEL0P3IENT OF SURGERY^- 

 One hundred years have passed since the 

 charter granted by King George III. in- 

 corporated the surgeons of England into a 

 Royal College, whereby the art and science 

 of surgery might be the better cultivated 

 and the commonweal of the people of this 

 kingdom benefited. 



We meet to-day in order to celebrate the 

 centenary of our incorporation, and the oc- 

 casion compels us to reflect how far the 

 College has fulfilled its high mission and 

 merited the public consideration and confi- 

 dence it enjoys, and, as we believe, deserves 

 to enjoy, through unselfish service to the 

 State. 



My first and most pleasant duty is to 

 welcome our illustrious guests who have 

 come from many and distant countries to 

 do honor to our College. Amongst them 



* Address of welcome on the occasion of the cente- 

 nary festival of the Eoyal College of Surgeons of Eng- 

 land, delivered by the president, Sir William Mac- 

 Cormac and published in the British Medical Journal. 



