THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. 
165 
psychology, demanding the highest order of intellect, — the dis- 
covery of agents obtained from the vegetable, animal, and mineral 
kingdoms, — the researches of the chemist, whose operations are 
connected with almost every branch of medical science, — we can 
hardly point to one department that is not, in a greater or less 
degree, necessary to the service of medicine : these are among the 
occupations of medical men, and they blend into the wider circles 
both of philosophy and science, for here there is no boundary to the 
scope of study. Nor are his moral requisites less indispensable. 
The practitioner in rural districts is a member of each social circle. 
To him the father resigns the health of his family ; he is admitted 
at all times and in all seasons; and here he may exercise even a 
parental authority. He thus becomes an adviser and a friend, and 
acquires extensive rights and peculiar privileges. The path to 
medical knowledge, also, is dangerous, and its requirements are 
often repugnant to delicacy. It involves intercourse from which 
the senses will often revolt. Often the medical man pursues his 
labours, unchequered by recreation for a single day, in companion- 
ship with sorrow, disease, and death ; and while his family seek 
the repose which nature demands, he is, perhaps, summoned to a 
distant village to minister to the relief of incurable disease, and 
devoting to reflection those hours in which he should invigorate his 
mind and body for the duties of the morrow. For the influence of 
such occupations on his health, I refer to the bills of mortality, 
which shew that he too often sinks into an early grave. Mr. Skey 
considered that this condition was altogether unmerited, and con- 
tinued : With large resources, the profession of medicine is at the 
present time a degenerate science. The rank of a select few may 
yet remain ; but the profession has ceased to be sustained to the 
level of its real value bv the voice of the public. The causes for 
this are various ; but I conceive the greatest of all to be, the want 
of education. It is mind that does the great work of the world. 
He who would study man in his mental and physical condition 
must cultivate an acquaintance with the writers of antiquity. He 
will take nothing upon trust, but will trace the stream of knowledge 
to its source. The language of ancient Rome is that of the great 
congress of medicine. It is the language of Celsus, and the 
adopted language of Haller and Boerhaave. Its cultivation is 
more indispensable to medicine than to any other department of 
science. Yet, for all this, the excessive cultivation of classical 
knowledge generates a learned folly, disqualifying its possessor for 
the acquisition of that knowledge which is necessary for our inter- 
course with the world. No man is fitted for the task of education 
whose mind is not stored with general knowledge. Another im- 
portant branch of study is that of the exact sciences. It is thus 
