HUNTERI AN. ORATION. ^1 



and that bodies for dissection should be 

 liberally supplied. By these means, . he 

 produced such a spirit of enquiry and emu- 

 lation amongst the members of our pro- 

 fession, that the French surgeons soon sur- 

 passed those of all other nations, and pupils 

 from every part of Europe flocked to Paris 

 to learn anatonly and surgery. As a further 

 consequence of this patronage, I may men- 

 tion that it gave rise to that very excellent 

 work, the Memoirs of the French Academy 

 of Surgery, the contributors to which were 

 laborious students of their profession, who 

 regularly registered and arranged all the 

 knowledge promulgated by preceding au- 

 thors, to which they added their own observ- 

 ations and experimental enquiries. 



It would, in my opinion, be honourable 

 to the surgeons of any nation to combine 

 and produce a rival work (due allowances 

 being made for the progressive improve- 

 ment of the science of surgery) ; for to me, 

 these memoirs seem, even at present, to 

 stand as it were alone, and in a state of lofty 

 superiority. Let me not, however, omit 

 to mention that before these memoirs came 



c 3 



