THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. 
219 
organic science. He believed that a review of the nature and 
amount of physiological knowledge, as it existed at the time when 
he first was called to teach, and of its progress to the present time, 
would be full of instruction. That progress had not been the work 
of chance: it had been preceded by a rational cause, and depended 
on the same laws as did the advancement of human knowledge in 
every other department. Its degree had been so high, that it was 
surprising to him that it had not attracted greater notice among the 
educated and the learned. The generalization of the properties 
and laws of organic nature, within the last ten years, had attained 
an importance that could only be compared to the determination 
of the laws of chemical affinity ; and that which had been hoped 
for as the fruits of some centuries of inquiry had been realized 
within a few years. He might cife, in confirmation, the disco- 
veries of nervous connexions by Bell, and the theory of cell- 
formation of Schwann. But not only had the results actually 
obtained been sufficient of themselves for a subject of felicitation, 
the mode of investigation had been changed and placed in harmony 
with that of the other inductive sciences. To appreciate rightly 
the state of organic science as it existed till within a very short 
time, it would be necessary to discriminate between what was then 
positively known, and what dwelt in conjecture and uncertainty ; 
for, unless this distinction was kept in view, the character of its 
subsequent progress could not be properly estimated. He would 
say that, in the anatomy and physiology of that period, the most 
striking feature might be characterised by the term uncertainty. 
Of the ultimate and essential structure of bone, cartilage, nerve, 
epidermis, and their allied organs, nothing was known positively. 
The connexion of the vascular system and solid tissues, and the 
question of secretion and absorption, were left in vagueness and 
doubt, and no useful generalization could be established. The 
attempts that had been made to question Nature anew, by a pro- 
cess more analogous to the relative unity of the objects of know- 
ledge to the human mind, had been successful in reclaiming the 
science of the body from speculation and doubt, and of placing it 
on the same basis as other positive sciences. The triple combina- 
tion of design , unity, and law, he thought, had not been sufficiently 
present to the minds of preceding inquirers. It was first necessary 
to subvert the prevalent belief, that the phenomena of living bodies 
had something so peculiar and so distinct from those of chemistry 
and physics as to require a mode of investigation different from 
that of all other objects of knowledge; a doctrine which had 
always exerted great influence on the progress of anatomy and 
physiology. Minute anatomy was unknown, and secondary phe- 
nomena gave the laws to the most important functions of life. 
