The Hunterian oration : delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, February 14th, 1887 / by William S. Savory.

  • Savory, W. S. (William Scovell)
Date:
[1887]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Hunterian oration : delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, February 14th, 1887 / by William S. Savory. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    education at the outset of life, without the advantage of the schools, he found himself face to face with the deepest and most mysterious problems of Nature. And he was forthwith able to take full measure of the magnitude of the task. It seems never to have occurred to him that he could snatch an answer by surprise ; that a solution could be reached by any short or sudden means. But his survey assured him that upon one plan only, but by that abun- dantly, could success be made certain. So with patience, which of itself has been called genius, he went back to the beginning. It was genius, too, and that of the highest order, to discern at so vast a distance, where the beginning lay. But there he placed himself, and from that point went forward only when he had made each footstep sure. Who shall say that his imagination was not fertile or that he faltered in the use of it ? Yet no seductive theory tempted him into undue haste ; and though sometimes drawn aside by a specious speculation, he seems hardly ever to have been lost in an unsound conclusion. And when he fell the treasures he had won were found not only in the multitude of facts he had garnered, or even in the principles, which by virtue of the facts he had discovered, were made plain ; but also in the very plan and purpose of his work. For, from the height on which at length he stood, not only can the path he trod be clearly traced, but the highway thenceforward is disclosed. So is the greatness of John Hunter to be estimated not only by what he discovered, but rather by the lesson and example of his work. Truly it may be said of him that he did much. Truly it may be said of him that he showed how much more is to be done. He, being dead, yet speaketh —still speaks to us as no other man before or since has spoken. But when and